Today was our regular, scheduled, sea day with the ship making its way up the St. Lawrence River. The weather was still very windy, up to 40 knots blowing down the river, so I was happy that we could do it all with slow speed as a result of cancelling Charlotte town. Had we had to go full speed as per regular schedule, we would have been pounding into the waves and it would have been an uncomfortable ride.

The first part of the river is so wide, almost sixty miles, that there is no pilotage. The ship travels under own navigation about 160 miles up the river until we come to the little town of Escomin where the pilots embark. This is the point where the river gets narrower, more shoals are coming and where the current becomes noticeable. So for this first part on the river, it is for us not much different then when sailing in the open sea.

On this 10 day cruise we only have one full real sea day and that means that most of the official activities had to be scheduled for today. This means the special lunch for our Suite guests; and the gathering of the Society of Holland America Line Mariners. The latter one is something that can create a scheduling issue, as we never know until half way through the cruise how many repeat guests we have on board. The company has made great strides with individual ID numbers and a database but much still depends on the diligence of the guest in providing the data. Not only are sometimes cruises not accounted for, for all sorts of reasons,;but people get married, divorced, change names and sometimes book under other initials. That all can create mistakes, so during the first few days of the cruise, we try to get the latest info from those guests who for some reason are not in the system or forgot to count certain cruises.

As soon as we know, how many we have, there is the question of what sort of party we will throw. Company regulations say on a cruise of 14 days or longer it should be an evening party. Is the cruise shorter, then it should be a morning party. However this was set up with total disregard of the various sorts of cruises that we do, so the hotel manager has to deviate from it. This cruise we had just over 730 Mariners on board, which is on the 1200, about 60%. This is just below average. In Alaska where we have a lot of first timers the number is much lower and on longer cruises, such as crossings or the world cruise the number is much higher. On the Transalantic of last April with the Veendam, the percentage was 92. Meaning that 92% of our guests had at least made two cruises with Holland America before they embarked for that Trans Atlantic cruise. The company is the envy of the cruise industry with such high return rates.

Although this cruise is shorter than 14 days we had schedule the party in the early evening, due to having only one sea day; and we had to do it in two groups. We can not get 700+ people in the lower show lounge. Lower and upper lounge only take 750 together, and we want all the people down stairs, for the handing out of the medals. Thus two parties, one for first and one for 2nd sitting. Most guests were on the 25 and 50 day level, thus not too many medals around, and only 3 guests with 700+ days. There were only 15 people who received a 100 day medal this time so I had to expand my speech a little bit to fill up the time. But the mariners get-together is a thankful thing to do as it is these people who form the backbone of Holland America’s success. Most of them make great efforts to introduce newcomers to Holland America and as a not un-important side issue, they happen to pay my salary………….