13 November 2008, Santo Tomas de Castilla.

By 4 am we passed the sea buoy and 5 minutes later the pilot stepped on board for the sailing through the fairway to the dock. This is one straight course of 187o but sometimes we have to steer 188 or 186 to counteract a small current or a little wind. With a cruise ship coming in, playing pilot here is a piece of cake as our ships steer extremely well. Still the pilot has to earn his money so for the next 20 minutes he kept himself occupied with keeping the ship on a course of 187o. By the time we came to the turning basin in front of the pier, it was time to take over and park the ship on its designated spot. By 05.15 we had the gangway out and just before 6 am. the first tours left to the airport for a trip to the Maya ruins of Tikal and Copan. They returned just before the ship was sailing.

Santo Tomas is a very sheltered port and thus there is very little wind and if the wind does not blow there is no swell or chop in the port. That makes the place an ideal port to hold lifeboat exercises. Of course a lifeboat has to be able to be lowered under any sort of weather in an emergency but then does not have to be hoisted back on board again. For retrieving a lifeboat we like calm seas so that the chance of accidents is the least. Picking up the boats, meaning the hooking in of the falls that lowered the boat in the first place, with sea motion is not risk free, and the more motion, the greater chance that a finger or a hand gets caught and thus smooth seas help.

All crew of the Veendam attends at least one full abandon ship drill a month. A full drill indicates that they are involved in the whole sequence of mustering, getting in the lifeboat and or life raft and train the whole disembarkation procedure. Apart from that there are the training drills which focus on a specific part of the whole operation such as inventory, layout of the boat, survival techniques at sea, crowd control and a myriad of other items that are related to the full sequence of a safe abandonment of the ship. As a result all crewmembers are involved in one or more drills a week to keep their knowledge and routines up to date.

Apart from the fact that each crew has a basic training for personal survival, there is specific training for key functions in the sequence that would be initiated if an emergency would occur. For those functions the law requires that the crewmember has a special qualification. We on board call it the lifeboat handler course but the official title is CPSC, a Course of Proficiency in Survival Craft. Each lifeboat and liferaft needs to have, by law, a number of crew on board who have this qualification. It is always the commander of the boat plus a few others, depending on the size of the survival craft. The CPSC courses can be taken ashore at a navigation school and other training institutes or obtained while onboard. Holland America has decided that these courses should be given on the ship. The advantage is that the crew gets trained with the equipment that is onboard and which with they might really have to work with.

These courses are given by the 3rd and or 2nd officers. They have been sent themselves to a training course where they obtained an instructors certificate which qualifies them to do the training. Each ship normally runs two training classes a year and during that period an extra, qualified, officer is assigned to the ship so there is no extra burden on the regular assigned navigators. The course takes about six weeks and is then followed by a week of exams. It is a lot of extra work for the crewmembers but most of them prefer it that way, as it least they do not have to do it during their leave period. Today we started here in Santo Tomas with the first exams.

We left exactly on time and headed towards Costa Maya; where we will arrive tomorrow morning around 0730. The weather looks good and we are supposed to be the only ship in port and thus the guests will have to whole resort to themselves.