10 December 2008, Belize.

The wind from the cold front of yesterday was still with us when we arrived at the Belize pilot station and the weather forecast indicated that there was going to be very little chance of sun during the day. The only good thing was that it would mean that the wind would blow the rain clouds away. Clouds that were hanging above the Belize jungle. Thus with a strong North Easterly wind on the beam we sailed into Belize. Normally we have the channel to ourselves but this time we had one of the little feeder container ships coming out. There is a regular service of small container ships that run from Miami up and down the West side of the Caribbean. The ship that came out was on its way to Santo Tomas so we will see it again there.

We call these ship Feeder ships as they “feed” containers to the big container ships that provide a world wide service. The cargo flow is basically as follows: Farmer Juan brings his melons to a distributor. There they are loaded into a container. This will be a container that can be cooled and we call that a” reefer”. That container goes on a flat bed truck for transport to the port. Here it is loaded on a Feeder ship which has a capacity of 200 or 300 containers if it services a small port like Belize or Santo Tomas. The Feeder transports the container with melons to Miami; there it transferred to a large container ship that can have a capacity of up to 10,000 containers. This big container ship will only call at one or two ports on a continent such as Southampton and Le Havre in Europe before continuing on to Asia via the Suez Canal. In one of these ports the container is transferred to another Feeder ship or to a flatbed truck and brought to its final destination. From farmer Juan to market trader John, it can take as little as 14 days for the total transport time. As the melons will have to be cooled; the trick is to keep the cool (reefer) container working all the time. Some of these containers have their own cooling system including petrol engine; others will take power from the ship. When the feeder ship sails from Miami to the Caribbean it drops off empty containers or containers filled with goods for the various ports and then on the return leg stops again to pick up containers with produce for the North American or European markets.

I mentioned yesterday that we gave the deck store keeper Sutrisno his final present for his retirement. I had a bit of a problem here as he had done 33 years and the company only recognizes (officially) the 30 years (ring) and the 35 years (clock). So I had to come up with my own idea for 33 years. I decided on a silver plate that listed all the ships that he had sailed on through the years. It is something visual that will still be there when all the other presents have long been used, broken or lost. The presentation was made during the first Captain’s Welcome onboard Champagne toast and Sutrisno had his final photo taken for his memories album.

On the photo surrounding, Sutrisno and me: Hotel manager Kees Streuding, Chief Engineer Gerard Mensink, Employee of the Month Roberto dela Cruz, Environmental officer Derek Williams, Chief Officer Marcel van Zwol (the boss of Sutrisno) Future Cruise Consultant David Giventer and Cruise Director Eric Holland.
Photo courtesy: Djordje Komlenski. Image Creator.

Indeed, it turned out a breezy day in Belize but it remained dry and thus, taking the cold front into consideration, it was quite a good day. We sailed right on time following the Norwegian Pearl, who was with us again today out to open sea. The weather for tomorrow is supposed to be warm and partly cloudy, at least according to the local weather guru’s. They are not used to cold fronts in Santo Tomas, so it am taking their forecast, with a pinch of salt……….. a large pinch of salt.