17 December 2010; Bridgetown, Barbados.

Barbados is one of those ports of call that I never hear anybody complaining about, which is I suppose the biggest compliment possible for a cruise guest to make. Normally there is always somebody who has to moan and groan about something but even the biggest curmudgeon seems to like the place. I know that I do. The locals all speak perfect English and approach everybody with the perfect mannerisms of good English education. Unfortunately the visitors do not always respond likewise but that is taken in their stride. Tourism is one of the biggest money earners for the island and their deepwater harbour makes it possible to have a large number of ships in at the same time. Thus everybody in Barbados is really focused to give everybody a very good time and good service. Today there were only three cruise ships in, The Ventura, the Deutschland and the Prinsendam. By sunrise there were only two, as the Deutschland was running at least 12 hours late due to inclement North Atlantic weather.

I have been following that North Atlantic weather for a little bit as it is the cause of any swell in the low North Atlantic near the Brazilian coast. As we had more swell than we normally encounter there, I kept an eye on the charts to see if it would get more or less. It stayed about the same but the picture “further up North” was not very pleasant. For one day the whole of the middle part of the North Atlantic showed a wave field of 4 meters or more. That is the wave height where the Prinsendam normally goes from gently pitching to “quite a lot” of pitching when at full speed. The Deutschland is about 2/3 of the size of the Prinsendam and must have it thus had it harder with those waves. So I expect that the captain over there eased the throttle back a little bit, to ensure a more comfortable ride.

For the Prinsendam guests it was the end of 3 days at sea. The Amazon day after Parintins and the two days it takes to get from the Bar to where we are today. Thus on arrival we had a whole ship full of eager shoppers and shore excursionists to stream ashore. I was pulling in very early, as the port is on the lee side of the island and as long as it is dark, there is, most of the time, not too much wind. Thus I arrived at the pilot station at 05.15 swung around in the basin and went astern to our assigned dock at the harbour breakwater. The Ventura who has 3,500 guests onboard has a change over day in Barbados and therefore gets the dock opposite the cruise terminal. For our location the port runs little shuttle busses, so that guests do not have to walk all the way around the port area. Docked behind us was a private yacht, the Radiant that was big enough to be a small cruise ship. Rumor had, that it had cost $380 million to build and was on charter to Bill Gates. The pilot did not know, apart from the fact that there was a heightened activity in port from burly men with sun glasses.

I was wondering how they managed to have a change over of 3,500 guests in Barbados as with the size of the island, the airport is limited in size due to the need for capacity to serve the island. However they found quite a clever solution for that, which they call the “butterfly” system. Today 50% of the guests will disembark and are flying home with scheduled flights and charter planes which at the same time deposit 50% of the new guests. Tomorrow the next 50% of the guests will fly home with the planes that will have delivered the incoming other 50%. Tomorrow evening the Ventura will then sail as scheduled for her Caribbean cruise. According to the agent it will make the airport “a bit hectic” but it is manageable. A challenge will be the inclement weather that is coming over the British Isles and the low lands and it is expected that Heathrow, Gatwick and Schiphol will be closed tomorrow due to heavy snow fall.

Three of my British officers were signing off today as well and we were all wondering if they would make it home. Although I had the impression that none of them were minding it very much if they would get stuck on the island for one or two days.

We sailed from Bridgetown westwards towards St Vincent and the Grenadines. At midnight we will pass under St. Vincent and then we are in the Caribbean Sea. Tomorrow is a sea day before we call at Oranjestad Aruba, which will be our final port of call on this 3 week cruise. The weather looks good and we will have following winds and thus it will be nearly wind still on the decks.

Bridgetown deepwater harbour on a busy day.