It seems that we have left the rainy weather behind us for the time being as the forecast for the coming days is only predicting sunshine. Early this morning we sailed past Stromboli again, with its top covered in clouds, so not much to see and then we headed for Messina strait. In order to make the schedule to Dubrovnik I went for an early passage and by 7 am we boarded the Messina pilot. He seemed to have had a bad night as he spoke no more then a few words during the whole sail through. As we went through at nearly slack tide (time when the tide and the current goes from Ebb to Flood or vice versa) the strait was full of fishermen. Due to the layout of the strait with its traffic zones and crossing ferries we pass these fishing boats a less then a 100 feet but they do not seem to be perturbed by it all. They are just happily sitting there in their little boats, with their back towards a vast mountain of steel rushing by at 18 or 19 knots, just going about their business as usual.

The rest of the day was spent sailing around the southern side of Italy heading for our next port of call Dubrovnik. While the guests are enjoying themselves with all the shipboard activities they see little of what goes on behind the scenes. Holland America prides itself on its training program and part of that program is to get outside trainers on board whenever possible. This cruise we have two firefighting instructors on board from the Texas A&M School of firefighting. Although the officers onboard train the crew themselves, it is very good to have people come in from the outside. Doing that brings a fresh pairs of eyes to the shipboard routine and as the instructors go around the fleet it insures consistency on all the ships.

Thus this week there were training classes for the fire teams, for the cooks in the kitchen, for the traffic directors (those who guide the guests to their lifeboat stations) and for every other group involved in our safety sequences. We did a major drill while docked alongside at Naples as it is still one of the few ports we are allowed to sound alarms and make announcements. I set the drill for 09.30 with the hope that most of our guests would be ashore by then. As it was beautiful weather that day it worked out well. By 09.25 only 50 guests were left on board of the 1248 we have on the ship. We always have a few guests who have been everywhere and have seen it all and they simply stay on board and enjoy the scenery from one of the lounges.

We try to vary all our firefighting exercises, and as the guests were ashore, we could train on a few crew cabins located in the middle passenger area of the ship. The success of on- board firefighting lays in the fast response to an emergency. When an alarm comes in on the bridge, an officer is dispatched to check it out. This is called a first responder and he/she should be on the scene within two minutes. If the fire alarm has to be raised, the teams should be able to dress up in full gear (protective clothing, breathing apparatus and tools) in under four minutes and be on the scene within 8 minutes after the alarm has been sounded.

We then “set the box” which means the area is surrounded at all sides by the fire teams, to contain and then to extinguish the fire. Evaluation of shipboard calamities through history has shown that if you get your teams on the attack within 10 minutes you have a very good chance of “winning” without it turning into a major event. When the drill is over a debriefing takes place where the whole evolution is reviewed into great detail and notes are made to improve the next drill. Even if you have a well oiled machinery as on our ships, there is always something to learn and always something to improve upon. The moment you think something is perfect, you have to be careful as that will be the moment that complacency sets in and that is the first step to disaster. Thus we keep training, evaluating and trying to come with even more refined action plans each time we have a drill.