8 April, The last day at sea before the Azores.

It is amazing to see that while guests love seadays, after a number of them in a row they are all getting restless and want to feel land again. The weather for tomorrow is looking good, just the fact that is the 2nd day of Easter might have some impact on the shopping possibilities for the Ladies. However as we still have some major shopping ports to come I do not think that the disappointment is going to be too great if we find on arrival that not all the shops are open.

The day was filled again with activities and it was a busy day for me as well, as I started my own training class. Holland America had a very clever idea a few years ago and that was to find a way to un-lock the vast experience gained by the senior officers during their career and to have that somehow transferred to the not so experienced. Human Resources came up with what is now called Leadership In Action Workshops. A training book was compiled and with the aid of the book workshops are given in groups of eight to improve the leadership aspects of a person in his function on board. A senior officer who is trained as a facilitator moderates the course which runs for about 9 weeks. Apart from useful for the participant, I find it fascinating myself as it is amazing to observe that each culture approaches the same issue in a totally different way. In my current class I have an Canadian, A Filipino, two Dutch, three Indonesians and an Australian. Although it costs me a lot of time, I believe that training is the only way forward, so we have to spend time on it, in order to keep the quality level up.

Another happening yesterday was my lecture about the Holland America History. If a cruise has sufficient sea days, and the Cruise director has an opening in the schedule, I like to do one as it is very popular with the guests. Quite a few of our guests came over themselves with an Holland America ship in the 1950’s, or had ancestors who once emigrated on a DAM ship. This time the audience numbered about 500 and indeed, there were guests who sailed on the old Veendam (1922 – 1952) on the Groote Beer (emigrant and student ship, first only under HAL management, hence the no-dam name) and a greater number on the Rotterdam V (1958 – 1997) which still has a warm place in the hearts of our long time cruisers.

Last night was the second formal night of the cruise and it is something that I really enjoy. People dress up nicely, there is stylish dancing, good dinner conversation and an elegant atmosphere pervades the whole ship. There is now the trend to go to less and less formal nights in the industry but Holland America tries to keep up this tradition although it seems to be more and more difficult to do so. Our next formal night should be a very good one, as it is the black and white officer ball. Then all the officers, except the watch standers and those going on watch, come out of the wood work to dance with the ladies. As I normally invite the concessionaires as well (shops, casino, beauty spa) there is also a sufficient number of ladies available to keep the gentlemen occupied, who lost their wife to some good looking young officer. But first the Azores.