21 October 2008, Manaus 2nd day.

Although a lot of guests went out in the evening, it was particularly the crew who sampled the nightlife of Manaus to a large extent. Staying overnight gives the Heads of Departments the chance to split up their teams in groups so everybody can have a bit of time off and also in a longer continuous period. One of the interesting results of this is, that the crew tries to prepare for going ashore by learning a bit of the local lingo. When we are in Mexican ports suddenly half of Indonesia on board are bandying Spanish words around and now here in Manaus, we hear Portuguese being tried out. I do not know if the locals were able to understand the HAL version of their language but the effort in trying from our side was certainly there.

For me it was an excellent chance to catch up with some sleep. Since we crossed the bar, I have been doing 6 hours on and 6 hours off with the chief officer. Although most of the time those six hours turned into 8 or 9 if you include docking and un-docking. Then there is still the ship to run, so sleep has been in short bursts and a bit irregular. I saw the Opera house last time and as I am not into shopping; I leave that to the experts, a few extra hours in bed was most enjoyable.

I have been writing a few times about the water height of the Amazon. The water level of the Amazon is of course much higher during the rainy season than during the dry season in the latter part of the year. Outside the passenger terminal in Manaus they indicate each summer how high the water level has risen during the past rainy season. The earliest year I could find was 1903 and since then each year has been represented on the wall. As you can see from the photo, there have been a few very low seasons but also a few seasons where the high wall in front of the dock was too low to keep the water in and the city flooded.

Water levels have greatly varied since 1900.

What is not indicated are the lowest water levels reached in the autumn. It seems that nobody found it practical to erect a pillar somewhere in the middle of the fairway and add the years on there. The Veendam came to Manaus for the first time in 2005 and by the time the ship left there was only 3 feet left under the keel at the dock. In 2006, it was 6 feet but the water level was falling by a foot a day then, thus if the cruise had taken place a week later, we would have to had dock somewhere else or anchor. This time it was much better. I observed 12 feet under the keel and it did not change. According to the pilot it had already started to rain in the upper reaches of the Amazon and thus the water level was not dropping anymore.

We left right on time by swinging the bow off the dock and drifting away on the one knot of current provided by the Rio Negro. Manaus Roads has a wide and roomy port basin and there is only one shallow patch that needs to be taken into consideration. For some odd reason the authorities decided to put a BLACK buoy there, which of course makes it highly visible during the night. We were not amazed at all to see that the buoy had been hit several times by passing traffic and was crushed almost flat to the water line. Of course the light that was supposed to be on top of it, was not to be seen either. However it still showed up very well on the radar so I lined the ship up well to the south of the buoy and handed over to the pilot. The first hour we had to go slow on the engines, due to the proximity of ships and docks, but then I could crank the ship up and with only 15 knots on the engines, we were flying down the river with 19.5 knots of true speed; courtesy of mother Amazon.

I had promised the guests that I would try to be a little bit earlier than scheduled and with this extra current, I will be there by 10 am., ready for the Veendam guests to invade Parintins. A good thing as well, as the agent just informed me before departure that I will have to anchor. They authorities have very recently condemned the dock for any size ship over 2000 tons and the Veendam did therefore not get docking permission. When the dock was just completed in 2006, I docked the Veendam at Parintins. This to the utter shock and disbelief of the pilots who had not deemed that possible. The dock is only half the length of the ship and there is always a strong current running in front of it. I had been looking forward to execute another eggshell maneuver here but now we have to drop the hook. More about that tomorrow.