Today we are sailing slowly. Slowly, making about 11 knots, which will bring us to Calvi on Corsica by tomorrow morning at 07.00 hrs. By 07.30 the hook should be down and our tender service in operation. So we are on our way from Spain to France. It seems that the islands here are nicely divided between the neighboring countries. Spain has the Balearic Islands, France has Corsica and Italy has Sardinia. On these two Mediterranean cruises we are not calling at any port in Sardinia although we have been there in the past. Very nice Island to visit.
With this port intensive cruise, it is hard to find sea days to enjoy the life on board and thus we have today whereby the ship sails slowly. Had we gone faster then we could have arrived early this evening at Calvi, but it would have been doubtful if many of our guests would have gone ashore? Cruising is more than just visiting ports. One of the reasons why our cruises with many sea days are so popular.
With all the guests being busy on board and being kept busy, all ancillary activities of the crew go a bit on the back burner. The focus is and has to be purely on the guests. So I had to keep my class in the class room and focus on theory and the deck department was either doing routine maintenance or preparing for the tender day tomorrow.
With a tender port that preparation consists of two parts. A. to get the big ship to the anchorage and B. to get the tenders from the big ship to and from the port. That is routine and both parts happen the day before we reach the port concerned. On the bridge in relation to navigating the big ship, there is normally at 10.15 a BRM meeting (Bridge Resource Management) during which the Bridge Team discusses how the call in the previous port went ( = lessons learned) and how it should go and is planned to go in the next port. The lead is normally taken by the Navigation Officer who takes the team through the evolution and then everybody can have a say, look at details and ask questions. The role of the Captain is to support this meeting, make the final decisions and give everybody the benefit of having the most experience on board.
Captain Hans Mateboer explaining the finer points of a safe maneuver.
Today the departure maneuver from Mallorca was discussed and as there are more ways to come to the same result, it can be very worthwhile to discuss what would have been the optimum way of leaving port under the circumstances as they were. Then the approach to Calvi came next. This is fairly straight forward. It is an open bay and you can anchor fairly close to the harbor. So the focus here was on the safe tender operation. We will be in port with a Costa ship and thus have two flows of tenders going to and from the pier.
Part B. is the tender briefing with everybody who is involved in the actual tender process. Thus at 1 pm. there was a meeting in the crew mess. All the quartermasters and sailors A.B. who operate the tenders; Security, who mans the shore side and the Navigation officers who oversee the whole process from the bridge. Where to dock, which course to sail from the ship. How to deal with the Costa Tenders, Which speed to drive with, Local sailing boats and six pack navigators that might get in the way: Etc. Etc. Calvi is a simple Tender port and thus the major concern is how to deal with the tenders of the other ship as they will dock at the same pier. There are some complicated tender ports which require an officer on each tender but tomorrow the focus is on having 10 tenders (we expect that the Costa ship has six of them) safely ferry everybody from the ship to the shore and back.
The way it is supposed to look tomorrow.
The weather should be very nice, little wind sunshine and temperatures in the mid 2o0C or low 70’s. Calvi is a nice place and the tenders park right on the promenade, so it should be good.
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