Today we spent the day at sea; travelling from the Florida Keys towards Mahogany Bay on the island of Roatan in Honduras. That meant crossing the Florida Straits, sailing around the West point of Cuba and then basically straight down to Roatan. Not much of an exciting voyage. The ship is staying too far west from Cuba to see land and most guests won’t see anything of the ships that sail around Cuba’s west point as it happens at night. The rest of the run is a course so unusual that only cruise ships could dream it up. Nothing exciting to see while looking over the ocean. The only ships that we could have seen are the Banana boats that sail between Santo Tomas and Tampa. However the Banana boat that you then might see was coming into Tampa when we sailed out, so one less ship to wave at. We will be in Santa Tomas de Castillo two days from now and when sailing in & out we will see the Banana Boats at the downtown pier of Santo Tomas. We dock at the container terminal / cruise ship pier. The why, I will explain in the blog of when we call there.
So today was a nice and quiet day at sea. The weather forecast was correct and we had following winds, just a bit more than the speed of the ship and thus a gentle breeze kept the temperature nice and pleasant. Most guests grabbed the chance and spent a larger part of the day outside. Unfortunately some of them forgot that a cool feeling on the deck does not translate into less sun intensity. By evening we had a few “lobsters” walking around. Just down the corridor from where I live, I overheard an argument that “Dear Husband” refused to put on a tie as he simply could not stand a tight collar because of the sun baked skin.
As mentioned before I, will be three weeks on the Ryndam and my activities will vary from training on Captains level & organizing large safety drills; down to refreshing the knowledge of various safety teams on board and helping out “where needed”. That last item opens up a large range of possibilities. One of possibilities is now being filled in with a Tender Driver Operator course. You might not know this, but a tender operator, the sailor that drives the tender which shuttles you between ship and shore, has to go through a lot of training before he is allowed to drive a tender. For that purpose the company has a complete training module out there. Before a sailor is allowed to qualify for tender driver he has to have:
- A full Lifeboat Commanders certificate
- A full SCTW (International standard for crew safety training) certificate
- Training/ certified in using the special release gear we have for the tenders / lifeboats
- Done the theoretical Tender driver course on HAL University which is the company’s intranet training system.
- Being an AB (= Able Bodied) Sailor which means he is a sailor who has the experience to do all the sailors work that is out there. His next step would be Quartermaster or Storekeeper.
Normally this course is given by a 2nd officer or First Officer but currently there are not enough hours in the day for the officers to get all the regular work done, so I offered to step in. For the next three weeks all on board will get dizzy from tenders going up and down at all hours of the day as part of the training program.
Today I started with the theoretical part which includes the Rules of the Road, reading Charts, recognizing buoys and what to do in emergencies. By the time a Holland America Sailor has passed his exam to be a tender driver, he will be competent and we can put our trust in him to bring all the guests safely to the shore and safely back again.
Tomorrow we will have an early arrival, at Mahogany Bay. This is a cruise resort on Roatan and as the pier is long enough to handle two cruise ships, we have to be early to get in first as the outer dock will be occupied by the Emerald Princess and the bay is too small to sail around her.
Weather for tomorrow: very light winds, partly cloudy skies and temperatures in the high 77’s. Perfect Caribbean weather, although “the lobsters” might think differently.
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