17 January 2010; Santa Marta, Colombia.

After a rather bumpy night we arrived very early this morning at the roads of Santa Marta. This city (500,000 plus inhabitants) is located on the West side of an outcropping, end of a mountain ridge; and is thus sheltered from Strong Easterly Winds. The Half Moon shaped bay gives good shelter for anchoring and here it was that I stopped the ship and floated, making slow circles, for two hours to get our compass compensated. By 06.30 we had the pilot on board and 30 minutes later we were alongside the dock.

Unfortunately it was not the downtown dock but the container terminal. Santa Marta is not really geared up for cruise ships, although more and more are calling there and thus there is no designated cruise terminal. You get parked where there is a berth available. So we got the coal dock. However with the very light easterly wind blowing and the continuous hosing down of the coal in the depot, there was no coal dust to be seen. Colombia exports coal and at the side of the dock there is a medium size depot where coal is stocked until there is sufficient volume accumulated to load a ship.

The port of Santa Marta Colombia, nicely nesteled in a natural bay. We were docked on the left side. The Bodega’s still visible in the drawing on the right (the white squares) have been removed to accommodate a container terminal.The port is not that big. For comparision, the Prinsendam took up the whole pier of the Westside.

We had arranged shuttles to take the guests to the main gate and that worked very well. It was a warm day and walking in the port would have been a challenge. We were not the only cruise ship also the Ocean Dream was in port which operates for a Spanish Operator called Pullmantur. The Spanish are starting to discover cruising and Pullmantur now has several ships dedicated to this market. This ship was once the Tropicale and the first new build for Carnival. It docked closer to town and that was mainly because she carries more passengers than we do and she calls more often and that establishes some sort of seniority. That dock was a container dock as the old sheds or Bodega’s have all been removed and the created surface concreted in for a small size container terminal. It is mainly used for the Banana trade and we saw the Chiquita ships arriving one after the other.

Now with dry dock behind us, I am trying to get the ship back to routine and one of the ways to do this is to pick up the drill schedules again. Today was a very good day, with nearly winds till weather, and thus a good opportunity to lower all the starboard boats and do some exercising. It is compulsory that all crew has at least one full abandon ship drill a month (including training and boat exercise) and with the dry dock period interfering with the regular schedule we have some catching up to do. Also in our next port of call, Isla de Providencia, we need all the tenders, as it is a long tender distance, so this was a great chance to run them through their paces as well.

For the rest we had an un-eventful day, which was a nice improvement over the last two days which were very bumpy. Tonight when we leave it will be windy again but we are going to sail with the wind and that will make it nearly wind still on the decks. The Prinsendam is an excellent sea going ship and surfing (e.g. riding the waves with following winds) is one of the best things that she does.
We will spend the whole day at sea, as the distance to Isla de Providencia is too long to make it in one night and thus we will have a sea day in the schedule. The average speed to maintain should be about the same speed as the wind is blowing and that means wind still weather on the decks. That will be great as we are going to have the grand opening of our deck 9 aft on top of the new cabin section. We had planned a sail away party here on departure Santa Marta but the inclement weather during the night before and the fact that we did not get permission from the local authorities to clean while in port, set it all back for a night.