05 July 2014; Skagway, Alaska.

My cabin is located right behind the Crows nest, just behind the bridge area. A great place to be, except when it is foggy. It is right under the whistle. And while the ship was in the middle of Lynn Canal, the clouds came down and it all changed into a very small world. Of course the bridge had to announce that to everybody by switching on the whistle. One long blast every 2 minute because of reduced visibility. I had hoped for another hour of sleep. Still every cloud has a silver lining, even if it is a very low hanging one I knew that there would be no wind during the day. It needs quite a bit of sunshine to get that Lynn Canal wind going and today there would not be enough of it.

So the good people who had been studying hard in how to handle a lifeboat were getting their practical today. Every group is different in behavior mood and attitude, and thus you approach each group differently when trying to get the best out of them. Having the entertainment department in a lifeboat is a totally different experience. An entertainer simply looks differently at the world than other crew. If they didn’t then they could not be entertainers, let alone good ones. Today’s group was made up from the Show – Cast, the singers and dancers who provide 3 different shows a cruise and if they were doing this ashore, that would be it. But on a ship, safety comes before guest satisfaction or any job you have to do, so today they were in the lifeboat. In real life they are communicators in the boat. Their function will be to explain to the guests step by step what is going on and to try to keep up morale.

The current cast of the volendam

Being creative people means that their lives are full of exuberance and emotion. Life has to be exciting.  They know that their function will be critical in saving the lives of 150 people in their boat and that is an exciting thing, so it could all be approached from the top of the world perspective. We were going on an adventure. None of them had ever steered a lifeboat so it was an exciting thing to look forward to.

A lifeboat does not offer the same glamour as the stage of the ms Volendam (Photo courtesy 3rd officer Amy MacDonald)

The only down part was, it was not glamorous. Once put into coveralls, gloves, helmet and lifejacket it looked more like a mining operation than anything else. But the weather was nice, overcast, no wind, a nice temperature and under the guidance of a 3^rd officer, Lifeboat nbr 4 motored around Skagway harbor. Carefully avoiding the boats from the Pacific Princess docked behind us and who were doing the same thing. Princess is also part of Carnival and they are going through the same changes as we are.

An hour and a half later the excitement was all over but we did not run into anything and we knew how to start, stop, go ahead, go astern, make a portside turn, made a starboard turn and how to get the boat back to the ship again. Then it was back to the class room, as they also have to do 2 computer based training courses, before the final exams coming Tuesday.  For the remainder of the day, there were two more practical classes for two other groups.

The last one was quite interesting, because when we were sailing around a tourist ferry and the Matanuska of the Alaskan Highway came in. With the orange roof we were visible from far away and I knew that they would be wondering what we were doing and getting worried. So the best thing was, while they were still at a good distance, was to get out of their approach as quickly as possible and as far as possible. I am ranting once in a while about six pack navigators in small boats, so I did not want to be held for one as well.  So the groups got an extra lesson in collision avoidance. Stay well out of the way, and keep your bow on a heading that makes for divergent courses, so the other ship does not get confused.

Tomorrow we are in Glacier Bay. Based on the weather today, Glacier Bay should be mainly overcast and wind still. But you never know what it really is going to be on the other side of the mountains with the ice cap being so close.  We will be at Bartlett Cove at 0700 in the morning and then steam up the bay to the glaciers.

I will be finalizing training material for most of the day, so when I leave on July 9^th to transfer to the Amsterdam the ship will have all the training materials it needs, power point presentations, checklists and instruction sheets, to implement the new alarm system successfully.