13 March 2011; At Sea.

So the cruise started with the Prinsendam as the last cruise ship of the day leaving Fort Lauderdale. We crossed the Straits of Florida on a North Easterly heading aiming for the North West Providence channel. There are basically two ways of getting to the Eastern Caribbean. That is going through Old Bahama Channel South of the Bahama banks and North of Cuba or our way; going north of the Bahama Banks. The Southern route is longer but with bad North Atlantic storms you are more sheltered as the Bahama banks, islands and reefs break the North Atlantic swell. At least for some time, eventually you clear the banks and then you are fully in the open as well. With the current weather it does not makes much of a difference which route you choose, although the Northerly route can have a lot less wind, as it is a bit further away from the trade winds during the first sea day and that makes it not so windy on the outside decks.  I saw that I was not the only one who had chosen the Northerly route, also the Norwegian Epic and Celebrity Constellation, both going to St. Maarten and our Eurodam, going to Grand Turk went north.

 As we all had the same average speed to maintain, we sailed in a sort of convoy towards our destinations. As we had been the last one leaving from Fort Lauderdale, it took a little while to catch up with them but by 8 am this morning we were slowly overtaking all the others. It always looks a bit strange if you see ships going in the same direction, sailing in the same time frame, and then see them all making different speeds.  That has to do with the engine configuration of each ship, something that differs from class to class of vessels. The Prinsendam has four engines and if we go too fast then we go down to three or two. Other ships have five engines, often not all identical and might adjust their speed in a different way.

 Thus while we are going towards our first port of call, Gustavia on St. Barts., we will have the Constellation and the Epic near us for a quite a while and not always in the same position, as they will arrange their engine configuration for the best economical speed possible as well.

 At noon time today we passed San Salvador Island, which is one of the most North Easterly islands of all the islands of the Bahamas’. Here Columbus discovered the New World, supposedly in 1492.  I say supposedly, as several other islands also lay claim to that fame.  Many theories have been launched to find proof for the definite location and heated arguments still arise from time to time about the issue.  They only thing I think is definite is that he must have landed on a Bahama Island somewhere as all those reefs form such a barrier that Columbus could simply not have missed it.

 I made sure that we did miss all those reefs by staying about 30 miles off shore while maintaining the same South Easterly course. We will stay on that course until we come to the entrance of the Caribbean Sea, with the British Virgin Islands on our starboard side and St. Maarten on our Portside.

 In the mean time the weather is to remain good, we are just supposed to get a bit more wind as the Trade winds are blowing quite strongly at the moment.