12 March 2016; Marghera, Italy.

The weekend started today and the shipyard went a little bit quieter.  But it being so close to delivery means a lot of work still goes on, especially by the sub-contractors. Those are company hired by the shipyard on behalf of Holland America who do the specialist installation work. Quite a few of them also live on board and they will prefer to continue working anyway. If they finish ahead of schedule then they will not delay the ships operation and they can go home earlier as well. On the outside deck the painters are taking  advantage of the sunny weather to continue painting.  They have been told to paint, so they paint, much to the frustration of the supervising deck officers who only like those areas to be painted that are supposed to be painted. Sometimes there is a “conflict of interest” and then the supervisor has to be located and after a bit of high drama the work goes on as it is supposed to be done.

The outside white starts to sparkle more and more with the constant painting going on.

Saturday is also the day the shipyard removes equipment no longer needed. This is mostly electricity cables and portable sub stations which all the workers use for their tools.  Nobody in the shipyard uses the power sockets in the ship as A: the plugs often do not fit as half our ship is on 110Volts. B: you never know if the power remains on with all the testing going on, C: somebody will get very upset if you connect a tool which is too heavy and then short circuit a junction box or worse.  When the building starts there is no electricity on board at all of course, only steel bulkheads, and then the whole ship gets power from the outside by means of heavy cables leading to portable sub stations (a sort of multiple junction boxes) all over the ship. A sort of temporary power grid. These sub stations remain in use until an area is completed.  With the nice dry weather today the yard had erected a special off-loading platform in one of the provision access doors to make it all a bit easier.

Our crew will be kept busy as this is our warehouse and everything you see will go on board in the coming days.

The Koningsdam is different to the rest of the fleet in many areas but there is one area where it is completely different. This is the first Holland America ship which is built with the – return safe to home – principle. This means if one engine room burns out with all the controlling equipment, the other one should be able to bring the ship home. If the navigation bridge becomes unusable then there is a second (more basic) navigation bridge on the top deck which makes it possible for the Captain to still sail the ship. This sort of two ships into one ship necessitated a lot of changes to the ships construction. Cooling systems, Electrical systems, basically everything is separate so can be fully split up in case of an emergency.

A nice touch in the Bill board area. A lamp in the form of a Trombone. Visible for a day and then wrapped up again until delivery day.

In recent time there have been a few ships which due to an engine fire were completely without facilities for a few days.  And a few thousand people without flushing toilets and A.C. is not pleasant. Thus the new systems now ensure that basic services will always be available. With the other ships there is retro fitting going on to make this also possible, at least to a certain extent, but the Koningsdam is the first HAL ship with the full concept.

These are a few of the several hundred boxes with crockery which are now unpacked and put to use.

It is now the plan for the complete crew to fully live and work on board, after the 17^th of March and this means the Hotel Department is ratching up the output of food and cabin services. By that last date all the offices should be finished so all the departments will be on board instead of in the yard offices. At the same time the crew training is in full swing. There is a second Hotel director on board who coordinates all the training to get over a 1000 crew ready for work. Safety first of course but then also all the work routines have to be rehearsed.

The Function Rooms on Main Deck have been completed. There are 3 but two of them can be split up.

Today the rest of the Entertainment Department joined the ship and now also the tests and rehearsals in the show lounge have started. Most of this takes place late in the evening when things are a bit quieter and not all the yard people “volunteer to become an impromptu audience”. The Cruise Director is now giving a daily announcement with what is going in. A most important fact, on Monday the self-service laundries for the crew will become operational. Good thing; as I am running out of clean socks etc.

Today all the ceiling lights in the main dining room were clearly visible.

Tomorrow is another quiet day and according to one yard supervisor a lot of extra protection will be installed in the delivered area’s and stay there until the final delivery of each area and the eventual handover of the ship.