22 Oct. 2015; Livorno, Italy.

Well, the predicted windy weather was a bit of an “Italian” storm in a glass of water as it was really pleasant when the sun rose above Livorno.  The good ship Zuiderdam thus happily docked at the regular cruise pier. By 08.05 the ship had been cleared and it emptied out with all of those eager guests desperate to soak up some local culture and history. Many guests had booked the shore excursions which were going beyond Livorno and those tours leave early in the morning and some are not returning until just before this evenings sailing time.

The route of the ms Zuiderdam into Livorno and the 180o turn at the dock. The little hic-cup in the approach was caused by the drifting of the ship as it had to suddenly wait for delayed outbound traffic.

As mentioned before, Livorno is not an easy port to get into and while the ships have increased in size, the port entrance has not and that makes every captain pray for no wind, or no more than a gentle breeze; with the emphasis on gentle. It is a tight turn going behind the breakwater and you cannot do it with too much speed. The slower you go, the more influence the wind has on the ship. With the cruise ships being virtually apartment buildings, the wind has a lot of influence. On top of that the sides are full with balconies and that makes it even worse, as the wind has now three sides “to hold” onto, instead of one flat surface as is the case with a container ship or a car carrier. Full on the beam does not matter that much, it is the same for any ship, but with having a wind under an angle then there are suddenly all those balcony partitions which help to catch the wind. While otherwise the wind would just whistle along the superstructure.

Those early leaving tours cause a bit of a headache for Culinary Operations as it has two immediate effects. One: guests are getting up much earlier than normal; Two: there is an enormous increase in Room Service Orders.  Item one is easily dealt with, the whole kitchen brigade gets up a little bit earlier and the Lido opens at 06.00 instead of 06:30 or 07:00. That might give some unhappy cooks but they are later compensated for the extra hours.  Item two, is a bigger challenge as we only have a finite number of Stewards available to provide Room Service as the regular Dining room is also in full swing at an earlier time. Thus the Culinary Operations Manager had sent out to all the cabins a note, requesting for patience as the delivery times might be not exactly at the exact time as was requested.  When I saw him later in the day, he did not have any black eyes, so I assume all went well.

The shore team paying out the air hose of the diver. With these projects they do not use SCUBA gear.

While the guests were out, the ship was getting a scrub under water. With the Livorno Alto Fondale dock being a safe and quiet dock, Technical Operations grabbed the chance to have the propellers and under water hull scrubbed from the marine growth which had come on during the past European period.  The divers who are doing it are not cheap, but the reduction in fuel consumption is considerable if the hull is clean and I would not be amazed if the total cost of today will already be earned back during the one crossing back to the States in a week’s time.  Although the fuel price has come down considerably since last year we are still talking millions of dollars per ship per year and thus 5% on the total bill has a big impact. Especially if you multiply this amount with 15 ships. Let alone thinking about the over a 100 ships in the Carnival Corp. fleet.  I wonder if the corporation had ever thought about having their own diving teams, or is that too complicated with licensing in the various countries? As part of the safety precautions they have a speaker on full volume so they can gear the diver breathing all the time. Due to the distortion it sounds like a very heavy smoker trying to run up the stairs. But if the breathing would suddenly stop it would indicate directly if something was wrong with the diver, the air hose or both.

The ship will sail, hopefully, by 19.30 hrs. depending on the fact if all the tours are back on schedule. Then we set sail for Barcelona, where we arrive the day after tomorrow. We will sail north of  Corsica through the Ligurian Sea and then angle down towards Barcelona.

The weather forecast looks a bit unsettled and once we are clear of  Corsica we might get a sort of mini-Mistral on the stern with about 30 knots of wind, which will later die down to 10 to 15 knots.  On the stern means following wind and following wind means that the relative wind on the deck should be quite reasonable. Not bad for Mediterranean Sea weather in autumn.