Captain Albert Schoonderbeek
During the night the swells from this weather front high up the North Atlantic reached us. A very long swell with a clocked time, from crest to crest, of about 12 seconds. The ships stabilizers could easily cope with this and thus the movement of the Prinsendam was minimal. The weather forecast for today was very good, with sunny skies and temperatures in the mid to high sixties although it turned out that that forecast had to be corrected later in the day.
I was aiming for a noon time pilot station time, which was on the early side but most of the time the river Tejo is full of sailing boats during the weekend, plus numerous fishing boats and then it is slow going. They always tend to be just where we want to be as well, and not all Sunday Sailors have any gumption of where they should be. That is out of the way of commercial traffic. I had also planned to swing on arrival, so we would be able to shoot straight out after departure tomorrow. A starboard side docking was making sense anyway as the tide was flooding and it is preferred to dock with the bow into the tide as it is easier to control the ship that way. As the Rio Tejo has a large estuary entrance which gets narrower and narrower ,like a funnel, when coming closer to the bridge, there is a considerable current on the river and along the docks. So with the pilots blessing, we were going to dock sb side alongside.
The pilot station of Lisbon is not at the entrance of the river, but about 10 miles upstream near Belem tower. That means that we sail ourselves those ten miles up and down the river until we get to the pilot station. There is the option to pick up the pilot before you enter the river but then you have to go to Cascais first, just to the North of the river mouth, that costs at least an extra hour and I have never seen the necessity of it.
The new “Belem Tower” of the pilots.
Most ships and certainly the cruise ships sail to the pilot station by themselves. The pilots used to be stationed at Belem tower but since some time ago they now have their own head quarters which is still a tower but a bit on the slant. Other words a tower with an angle. The pilots themselves are less than outspoken about this design so I do not know if they really like it. Just before we entered the river we had over taken a small Dutch coaster the Mathilde. These small ships normally have a crew of about six or eight onboard and are very numerous along the coast, although it looked as if this one had just made the crossing from somewhere in the Azores. We passed that ship on its starboard side with about double the speed and I always wonder what they must think on the bridge when they see year another “fur-coat-boat” racing by. Sailing on the coasters takes a special kind of mentality so I do not think that they would be particularly jealous of not sailing on a cruise ship, in the same way that I have absolutely no desire to sail on a coaster. I suppose we all choose the ships and environment we enjoy and feel comfortable in. They were scheduled to be at the pilot station an hour after us.
When we entered the river, I slowed the ship down so that in case of an emergency we could stop quickly. An emergency, most likely being a sailing yacht that would decide to get in the way. Although the estuary is wide, the deep part of the river is not, and thus there is not much room to change course to avoid another ship; reducing speed or stopping is the only option. Although the sailing yachts were out in full force, with several races going on, the race marshals had everything well in hand and no yacht strayed off the beaten path and into our way.
Thus I did not have to slow down too much and as a result we were early at the pilot station and also docked early. We docked at the Rocha terminal which is just North of the bridge. The old passenger terminal is under the bridge but the Queen Victoria was docked there and the rest of this terminal is now used for container ships. Behind us was the Club Med, already docked, so we had to park the Prinsendam in between the Club Med and the container pier. The sun shone beautifully while we were docking but it did not last long. More about that tomorrow.
To access Captain Albert’s historical writings on Holland America Line as well as photos and additional information about Prinsendam and his sailing schedule, click here.
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