15 June 2009, At Sea, of the French Coast.

The pilot was disembarked just after 3 am. in the morning. In the same way as he had come onboard, via helicopter. From the pilot station we set course in a Northerly direction along the French coast heading for Saint Peter Port, Guernsey. Although the weather was forecasted to be very good, with sun most of the day, there was a long and moderate swell running from the NW. This was caused by some bad weather travelling east under Iceland and the swell of it ran all the way down to the French coast. It made the Prinsendam a bit wobbly with once in a while a considerable “pitch’ from the bow. By now the guests had been onboard long enough to have gotten their sea legs and thus I did not receive any reports of guests being inconvenienced or ill. Still I tried to minimize the effect of the waves on the ship by slightly altering the ships course where possible and running at a good stabilizer speed.

Due to the strange departure time from Bordeaux because of the tide, we did not have to make too much speed to get to Guernsey on time and so I could keep a speed that kept the stabilizer happy and prevented the ship from plowing too fast into the waves. For us the movement was unusual having been blessed with smooth seas for the past days but for the North Atlantic this was very good weather.

As Bordeaux is located in the South of France, we had to steer courses that were first taking us away from the coast in order to be able to sail around the Coast of Brittany and Normandy. The more to the north we came, the more traffic we could observe. By 17.00 hrs. in the evening we approached Quessant Vessel Traffic Separation scheme which is watched over by radars on the French coast. Each vessel approaching has to identify themselves and is then given approval to proceed. There is an inner lane for inshore traffic and an outer lane for international traffic. We always try to get permission to use the inshore traffic zone as it saves about 10 miles on the journey. This time we had to wait for permission as the operator did not know whether the destination Guernsey (being British and not French) would qualify for inshore traffic. However a supervisor somewhere in the background decided that as the Prinsendam was coming from Bordeaux (French port) and was going to Guernsey (which should be a French island, I suppose) it was ok to proceed.

Guernsey and the adjacent islands are of course an anomaly. They are British and proudly so, but are lying very close to the French coast. During the 2nd world war they were occupied by the Germans and before that time things were not exactly peaceful either. The islands are full of battlements and other relics from previous wars or fortifications to prevent wars. Especially the island of Aldernay is basically one big fortress. Tomorrow we will see some of these war relics as points of navigation when we approach the anchorage.

I threw another party today, namely a luncheon for our back to back cruisers (2x) We always give a party for those who stay on for an additional cruise and on the Prinsendam that is on average about 200 of the 780 guests onboard. However this time we had 22 guests onboard who had joined on April 30 in Fort Lauderdale; stayed on after May 20 and stayed on for this cruise (June 5), so double back to backers. We have a few who are staying on until the end of next cruise (June 19 – July 3), thus every reason to honor these die-hards in cruising and they were all invited to a Pinnacle Grill lunch. In the coming weeks it will be much harder to organize parties and get-togethers, as the number of sea days will be less and the arrival and departure times much more inconvenient. Some people say that after a Baltic cruise you need a vacation and I cannot say that I dis-agree with them. Port intensive, overwhelming impressions and experiences but very tiresome with the long days in port. I will be a lot less in the ship on that cruise than I am now.

Tomorrow we are in St. Peter Port Guernsey for a full day. The port is too small and too shallow to dock in, so we have to anchor. However the weather looks very good, hardly any wind, sheltered from the westerly swell and sunny with temperatures in the low 60’s.