14 November 2008, Costa Maya.

It is always nice to be the only ship in port. You do not have to arrive too early to fit in the schedule or to try to get the best berth and when you are the only ship you can pick which berth you prefer. Thus so it was today and with a low easterly swell and south easterly wind I could dock at my favorite dock, berth nbr. 3, nose out. Keeping the nose in the wind and the swell on the bow makes the ship sit much more quietly than when the swell is on the beam. As a result the gangway moves less due to a riding ship and there is also a much smaller chance of breaking mooring ropes due to the ships movement.

Pier 3 has another advantage and that is for the guests, especially for those who do not want to walk too far. The resort has a sort of shuttle bus that operates up and down the long finger of the pier. It is basically four wheels with a roof and rows of wooden seats pulled by a small tractor. If you are docked on three is comes much closer to the gangway than when on one or two as it cannot make the turn into the NW. finger of the dock. As a matter of fact the contraption cannot turn at all. When it comes to the end of the pier the little tractor that pulls it; unhooks, drives around and hooks up again at the other end and pulls it back where it came from. It is a very simple system and works quite well.

I always dock nose out at nbr 3 and that is for a safety reason. In principle it would make more sense to go nose in as it would reduce the walking distance for the guests to the resort by almost a ships length. However the port is fully exposed to the elements and you never know if a sudden squall might pick up or that a cold front from the Gulf of Mexico descends much faster on the Yucatan basin than expected. If the weather would really turn nasty at once, or if large wave fields would start to come in, the only place for the ship is to be in open waters. If you are then docked nose in, you have maneuver slowly astern on the propellers until you are clear of the dock and then swing around in that nasty weather. With the nose out, it is a matter of letting go the lines and “give gas”.

While we had the USCG in Key West, today we had the Mexican Navy in Costa Maya. Boys with Toys racing around the ship on arrival and departure. In the previous years we did not see them very often but recently they have had a fast deployment boat stationed at the town jetty of Mahualal, the little town just to the South of Costa Maya. Quite a few of our guests walk from the resort to the town and in the last year they have been quite active there to spruce the place up. Personally I do not always agree with “this sprucing up” as it quite often kills the local character of the place which is the main reason why people were going there in the first place. One of the nice things is that the water in front of the town is extremely shallow and there is a restaurant where you can have lunch by sitting with table and chair in the water and have the sea play around your ankles. Works almost as good as air-conditioning.

For me the day was filled with my “walk-a-bouts”. Little inspections; mainly of items that might otherwise not be picked up by the department heads as they pertain to more than one department. As in every large organization, there are always “border issues” that either belong to everybody or nobody and then need a captains order to assign it to one specific department to have it properly prioritized and taken care of.

We sailed from Costa Maya on time and I had to announce that there was a bit of wobbly weather on the way. A strong cold front is coming down from the Gulf and will meet us sometime tomorrow. It all depends on how fast it will travel, whether we will meet it during the afternoon or evening and it might result in an interesting and windy arrival in Tampa.