It is always a pleasure to come to Monte Carlo, even if it is only for the view from the ship. The bad weather dissipated during the night and there was hardly any wind at all during the day, just sunshine. However the wind had left some swell behind, so we were looking at a wobbly tender ride to get ashore. We were in port with the Amsterdam (on the last leg of her annual world cruise) and as she was on the best anchor spot, having arrived earlier, I decided to stay on the engines. That means manuvring all day, so it was going to be al long day for me on the bridge. however I was not planning to expose my guests to a long and wobbly tender ride to the dock. Thus we floated in front of the harbour entrance, reducing the tender ride to less then 5 minutes. Monte Carlo now also has a regular dock. This is a floating dock, at one side connected to the land and on the sea side kept in position with a whole series of anchors. The Seven Seas Voyager was docked at this pier, so there was no room for us this time.

We try to dock as often as we can, but sometimes a shuttle operation with boats is the only way to get guests ashore. We call it a tender operation and we use dedicated boats for this purpose, boats that seat approx. 80 guests. The British call them Launches, we call them Tenders. They are driven by Quatermasters or experienced sailors. These gentlemen are specially trained to operate the boats and their training consists out of Navigation, Rules of the road, manuvring and what to do if something goes wrong. We have four tenders on board and depending on the distance from the ship to the shore, we use 2, 3 or all four.

The guests leave from the ship through a side door located on B deck. This is the lowest deck of the ship above the water line. We have four such doors, two on each side of the ship, but most of the time we can only use one or two, depending on the swell that is running. In Monaco there was still a considerable swell so I had to keep the ship under such an angle that as little swell as possible would reach the platform that is used to moor the tenders to and we could only use one door. Taking into account that there was also a current pushing the ship towards the beach and a bit of wind pushing at the funnel, meant that the manuvring all day with the Veendam, was a constant balancing act with the thrusters and the main propellors.

Most of our excursion tours went in the afternoon, as we had to share buses with the Amsterdam. Some of them were delayed in coming back, thus delaying our tours and their later return delayed the departure of the ship by an hour. However as the weather was glorieus, a good time was had by all.

Most guests were back in time to see the Amsterdam leaving and to listen to the exchange of greetings with the ships whistles between the two captains. We left shortly after, once again sailing across a nearly flat sea surface. This North West Corner of the Med. is called the Ligurian Sea. Liguria is a region in North West Italy that gave the name to the adjoining water. The region is named for an ancient pre-Indo-European people, the Ligurii. The area was subdued by the Romans in the 2nd century B.C. and was later (16th-19th century) controlled by Genoa, which is nowadays the biggest Italian City in the area.