Sailing inside the East Caribbean rim of islands means that you are really sheltered. Except when you are sailing past the gaps between the various islands. Then the long rolling ocean swell comes through and catches the ship. This is what we experienced last night. Rocky steady ship followed by brief periods of the occasional wobble. Of course the ship had the stabilizers going but as they dampen only about 90% of the roll you will always notice the difference between no movement and a little bit of movement. While walking through the ship I was admonished by a lady to tell the captain that he should make up his mind and stop this on and off “lurching” of the boat. A ship is a small place so even the guests find out eventually who I am and what that group of young people do who are with me on board. Plus the constant urge of the crew to chat to the guests and give them titbits of exciting information, means nothing is secret and thus the Lady thought I was the one with the most direct pipe line to “that guy on the bridge” and get things sorted out.
Well I know that no captain has yet been able to smooth the seas and thus the occasional wobble continued. Still it became less and less; it started yesterday morning when the wind died down and then eventually the seas also started to lessen. By the time we approached St. Thomas all the wind was gone and the seas where considerably reduced.
The Noordam docked at Crown Bay which was developed in a joint venture with Carnival Corporation after the US navy closed its submarine base there. Thus we do not dock at the WICO pier (West Indian Company) but on the other side of the bay. Both have a shopping center but Haven Sight at the Wico pier is much larger. It also has to deal with many more guests. When three mega liners dock at that pier it is easily possible to have 12,000 guests descending on the Haven Sight shopping area. To get to downtown from there you have to take taxi or one of the many shuttles busses/trucks all manned by very noisy drivers. This you have to do from Crown Bay as well, so there is not much difference.
Crown Bay is a little more sedate. Only two ships can be accommodated and normally the slightly smaller ships go there and thus there are seldom more than 5,000 ashore at the same time. Today we were are all by ourselves here, so only 1,800 guests, with only one other ship in port, the Carnival Breeze, which docked at the WICO pier.
The very nice thing about Crown Bay is that a lot of beach, snorkel and party tours leave from right next to the ship and no transport is needed to the pickup point. We cannot have tour boats come alongside the ship for insurance and security reasons and so docking the ship next to the tour boat area is a very good solution.
In the days before 2001 we sometimes had tour boats coming alongside as long as our insurance guru’s in the head office had figured out how it worked insurance wise if somebody would fall between the ship and the tour boat. Who would be responsible? Cruise ship? Tour boat? The party who owned the gangway that was used for the transfer? The supervision on one or the other side of the gangway? Very difficult. I did it often in the past and I never liked it, mainly because the tour boat operators never wanted to listen to us but did their own thing and some of those “own things” were quite often very much “laissez faire”, while we would try to work with strict and safe protocols.
Today no such worries. The Noordam was safely docked and the guests only had to walk around the bow to get to the tour if they were going to take one. Those on other tours stepped on mostly open top busses, what they used to call share-a-banks in the past, to go wherever they had to go.
The Noordam now has to go to Half Moon Cay. Tomorrow we will be at sea and with the wind having subsided it should be a smooth ride. Then we will arrive at 08.00 hrs. at the anchorage of HMC for a call lasting to 3 pm.
Weather for tomorrow: Partly Cloudy with the temperatures coming down to the mid Seventies as we will have the cooler sea air blowing around the ship.
March 19, 2015 at 3:55 pm
Your “if somebody would fall between the ship and the tour boat” reminds me of a heroic Security Officer you had (still have on board the Yachts of Seabourn? – P. Haggerty)
Thus, the rescue jumpS of Officer Haggerty in the water between the ship and the pier could have caused some fierce typing of forms on the computer!?
If only we knew how much paperwork the Captain has to shove around on his desk (you have explained some of it …. / and I won’t react this time when my comment instantly flips off the screen again)