17 May 2008, At Sea.

Yesterday most of our day was filled with an inspection by the Canadian Port State authorities. There is an international agreement between the major shipping countries in the world to do regular ship inspections. It is called the Paris Memorandum Of Understanding. Most of the time the aim is for two inspections of a ship each year. Unfortunately the USA does not participate in the program. It has its own USCG inspection so it means there are two additional inspections each year if a ship calls at USA ports frequently. When a ship is inspected any deficiencies observed are noted in a database for other member countries to peruse and in that way a close eye can be kept on the state of readiness of all vessels. If a ship is in a bad state, it can be detained until repairs are carried out or the training of the crew is improved to an acceptable level.

In Canada it is the Department of Transport who carries out these inspections on behalf of the Canadian Government. In the course of the season all the cruise ships are visited and the first inspection called the “initial inspection” is announced ahead of time. This makes sense to do, otherwise a certain part of the ships crew might be ashore and then the inspectors would only be able to observe the “in port” emergency procedures instead of the full setup for at sea.

The routine is straight forward. A fire drill is done, followed by an abandon ship drill. This time the inspectors requested a Man Over Board drill as well, no doubt as a result of the recent spate of reports of people falling or jumping off cruise ships. This is followed by a debriefing of the drills on the bridge. This is very useful for us, as the inspectors visit so many different ships and see so many different routines, that they can make some very astute observations. They can be very detailed in their criticism about what they have seen and great was my delight when the verdict was that our fire drill was above the general level observed industry wide. A rare compliment indeed. The remainder of the day was then filled with checking certificates, licenses and inspection rounds through the ship with random smoke detector and fire door tests. Engine room equipment was checked and the emergency generator tested. Quite a bit of time was spent on the bridge as great emphasis is placed on the proper functioning of the all the navigational equipment and the presence of the latest charts and navigational information. Transport Canada requires that a certain number of specified charts are on board and they use a checklist to see if indeed each chart is present and up-to-date. Although we nowadays work more and more with electronic charts, the official change over has not yet come and so the paper charts are still verified. The Veendam came through the inspection with flying colors and so it was a good day for all of us.

I sailed for the late Seymour Narrows tide and then through Johnstone strait during the early morning. That made it possible to pass by Alert Bay during day light. Later on we were in Queen Charlotte Sound again, where the whales put on a considerable show. There was still some swell left from the bad weather of two days ago and it seems that the whales really like that. There was a lot of tail flipping going on but this all stopped when the swell started to level further off, when we entered Hecate Strait.

Tomorrow we will be in Ketchikan and according to the weather forecast we are going to be in for a rare treat. The sun will be shining. As it is dry only for 33 days of the whole year in Ketchikan, and most of those days being overcast, its means that it will be a special day indeed. Sunshine normally also means reduced visibility and thus I expect long standby hours on the bridge during the coming night.