This was one of those days, that did not look very good, but the ship made it work and it turned out well later. The Veendam sailed with a slow speed from the pilot station of Cienfuegos around the west point of Grand Cayman and then approached the anchorage of Georgetown. It was a whole parade as the 3 other ships were following behind us.  We could see as soon as it started to get light that we had two challenges: 1. The wind was from the wrong direction and we could not anchor. All the ships would veer the wrong way and come too close to each other or to the reefs or both. So the whole happy club had to stay on the engines and drift, but drift so little that they still would not come too close to each other. 2. This wrong wind, caused by the same system which made us stay away from Cienfuegos yesterday, brought a large band of nasty looking clouds over the island. And nasty looking clouds come with lots of nasty wind.  Extra wind pushes up the waves and that causes challenges for the safe tender service.

All ships drifting off the port. You can clearly see the prop wash of the Norwegian Escape, just behind the tenders.

Luckily the regular wind pushed those clouds away and by 09.00 hrs. we had regular Grand Cayman weather, sunny with nice small bands of white Cumulus clouds. Only the wind itself was still from the wrong direction. But for that we have the Captain and his navigation team and they played all day with the ship to keep it in position. Newer ships have D.P. or dynamic positioning. The GPS (Global Positioning System) is connected directly to the propellers and bow thrusters and it keeps the ship in the same spot, give or take a few feet. A navigator has only to sit behind the screen and make sure that it keeps doing what it is supposed to do. The Veendam is from an older generation. Although it has all the maneuvering gadgets, they are not connected to any automatic system, you cannot push a button and let it goe by itself. The captain has to push his own button and do it all by himself. (Or delegate to the Staff Captain on other Senior Officer)

When the wind is right. All ships with the bow on the shallow part and the stern still in the deep part. (Thank you Google Earth)

To drop the anchor we need a steady North Easterly wind and not a Northerly wind as we had today. What we do then, is we sail towards the reef outside Georgetown harbor. Grand Cayman is nothing but the top of a mountain pinnacle which rises up for a 1000 feet from the sea bottom. So we anchor on the ledge where the water is about 30 feet deep. That is where the anchor is and that is where the bow is. The stern is still floating over the 1000 feet depth. As all 4 ships anchor nicely in a row, they all get a little area assigned where they can drop the hook. To make sure that this goes right, the pilot boat comes out and parks itself above the exact location and then the captain brings the ship, read the anchor, exactly above the pilot boat. If he over shoots, the bow will hit the shallows, if he stays too far out, the anchor will miss the reef. Once in position the pilot boat moves away and the ship can drop the anchor.  Thus far no anchor has hit the pilot boat yet but there have been a few close calls where a too eager officer on the bow did not wait long enough for the pilot boat to be completely away. The anchor goes down and then the ship goes sideways so that the anchor chain is laid out over a section of the reef and the pilot in his boat advises if things are going well.

A view from the electronic chart, with the bow exactly on the edge of the 20 meter depth line and the anchor just outside the 10 meter depth line.

He does this with all four ships in a row and if they all do the same thing then each ship ends up 180 meters, or one cable, or 1/10 th. of a mile away from each other. That is not much but as the wind blows against all the ships in the same way, they all are being pushed to deep water and line up behind their anchor, which is hooked into the reef and keeps the ship in position. But that only works if the wind is exactly north east. Which it normally is, as that is the direction of the Trade Winds. Except when a weather front further north causes the wind to come from a different direction as was the case today.

With four ships in, out guests had to share downtown, and the tours and the beaches with 12000 other guests and that made for a busy day. Still it can be worse. On the 20^th of March the Nieuw Amsterdam is in with some really big boys and together they will put 20,000 guests ashore. Not much can be done about it, cruising is becoming more and more popular and with ships on the 7 day circuit, so they are all in the same ports on the same day at the same time as they depart and return to Florida each weekend.

From Grand Cayman we will sail back to Fort Lauderdale with a day at sea tomorrow and then in Fort Lauderdale we will start a cruise to the East Caribbean. By tomorrow the wind should be in the south east as it is still under the influence of the weather front up north. That wind will remain a challenge for the coming days.

All that nasty pink stuff up in North America causes the wind patterns to change in the Northern part of the Caribbean Sea.

While the sun was rising behind the mountains of Cuba, the Ms Veendam approached the pilot station of Cienfuegos with the plan to sail through the narrow entrance at 06.30 and then to be at anchor by 07.30 hrs. for clearance by the local authorities. All eyes on the bridge were on the anemo meter to see how much wind there was blowing. In the entrance we had to make a 90o turn in a channel that is only 300 feet wide.

This is the challenge, the ship has to make this turn. The under water is 300 feet wide and the Veendam has a beam of over a 100 feet.

The Veendam is the largest cruise ship that has ever attempted to anchor at Cienfuegos and it relies on there being no more wind than 5 to 7 knots in the turn. So we were watching closely as the wind in open waters was around 20 knots and gusting higher. Normally there is not much wind on this side of the island but a weather system off the Carolina’s is producing a lot of wind while moving into the Atlantic and the tail is just laying over Cuba. Not nice.

The Master – pilot conference with the Navigation Team watching. They are looking at a large television on which we can project the electronic chart.

The captain had his doubts, the bridge team had its doubts, and I had even more doubts as I do not like to go anywhere without a plan B and in this case there is no plan B. You either make the turn or you don’t. If you do not, then a new hotel will be established along the coast line here. The pilot was queried about wind and weather but according to him it was all within the limits. So the captain decided to make an approach and have a closer look. Go not too far enough into the channel so we could still turn around and close enough so that we could see the corner. In nautical language we call this an abort point. While there, the captain asked the opinions of all in the team and then decided to turn around as we could see white caps on the water, at the bend in the channel, and that meant winds higher than 16 knots which was a lot more than the 5 knots we wanted.

This is the challenge. When a ship goes around the corner, it always drifts a little bit even at very slow speed.  If the wind then helps the drift you very quickly get outside the red line and that is bad news.

But you never know the wind might die down, so we tried it for a second time. Things got worse, more wind. Then the pilot advised that there would be even more wind in the afternoon so there was no reason to wait a few hours and see if the wind would die down, giving us the chance to make an afternoon call. So unfortunately the captain had to cancel the call and make it a sea day instead. Going somewhere else was not an option as just hopping over to another Cuban port is not something that really works under the current arrangements of Cuba Allowed Cruising. For the rest there is no other port nearby apart from Grand Cayman and we are already going there tomorrow.   Lots of disappointed guests and crew, including myself as I have never been to Cienfuegos before myself. But safety comes first even if it is a chance in a lifetime to go somewhere. Hal captains do not gamble.

Look to the right, there are mud flats sticking out under water from the Lighthouse so this is as tight as the ship can be and as it needs to be to make the turn. Too much wind and you are set to the other side which is shallow as well.

Thus we said to goodbye to the pilot, who was not happy at all, as most likely back ashore a lot of people would be yelling at him. He might know the channel but he does not know what wind does to a very high cruise ship with balconies. So he might have gained a bit of experience today as well.  The Veendam will be back to Cuba in the future again and hopefully the wind will then do what it is supposed to do here; stay away.

With a sea day, the Cruise Director had to fill an empty daily program and I was roped in as a space filler to keep at least some of our guests happily diverted for a few hours. The Captain decided to join me so he could explain what happened as guests normally equate cancelling ports with bad weather, not with a nice and sunny day. So a little explanation about what was lurking under water helped to raise the mood and was also greatly appreciated. I think it must be the first time in HAL history that two captains were giving a joint presentation on the stage. He used slides from his last call, when he did get in, to explain what the challenge was and these are the pictures you see in this blog today.

For the remainder of the day and night, the Veendam will sail very slow towards Georgetown Grand Cayman where we will arrive around 06.30. For anchoring in Grand Cayman a bit of wind is good; we are at anchorage number 4 which is the nearest one to the port and, if available, we will get help from a few shore side tenders to speed our operation. All good things after not such a good day. But it is going to be a busy day tomorrow, with the Brilliance of the Seas, the Norwegian Escape, the Carnival Miracle and the Veendam nicely lined up outside the port. They will put 12,014 guests ashore if everybody is going, not counting crew.  It is going to lively in Front street. But we are still lucky, on March 20^th. The Nieuw Amsterdam is in port together with a few biggies and they will put ashore just over 20,000 guests.  I will stay on board and use my time to teach the shop staff how to deal with guests who do not want to go to the Guest Boat drill.  That is much more fun.

Just after 01.30 last night the good ship Veendam pulled out of Havana and returned to open sea. Most guests I spoke to found it a most interesting experience and the common remark was that Cuba was far from being in the bad state as some politicians said it was. The old American cars are becoming rapidly a status symbol and more and more new cars are appearing on the road. Because Cienfuegos is all the way at the other side of Cuba, we spent the day going around the island. It is a distance of 301 miles from sea buoy to sea buoy and with our planned arrival time of 06.15 hrs. at the pilot station, we have to maintain an average speed of just over 16 knots to make it work.  The port is located deep inland in an inland bay and from the pilot station it takes another another hour to get to the anchorage.

The ms Veendam rounding the West Point of Cuba, Cabo San Antonio at 12.23. hrs. in the morning.

But I promised a blog about HAL and Cuba. Holland America started out on the North Atlantic run with ships sailing between Rotterdam and New York. The first ships were passenger ships with a large cargo capacity and they could deal with both human and non-human cargo at the same time. But the emigrant trade to New York brought in a lot of money and in 1909 HAL bought a company called the Neptune Line and that gave it access to ports away from New York. Nowadays we would call that diversification. Those ports were to the North of New York, Boston and further up towards Chesapeake Bay. The next logical thought was what we can do in the north, we can also do in the south with ports along the South East Coast and around the Gulf (including Mexico) and this gave rise to the “Gulf Service”.

The ss Andijk (I) seen here in an East Coast port.

When sailing from Rotterdam to those ports, it is impossible not to sail past Cuba and thus did Havana appear on the horizon. On 26 November the ss Andijk arrived in Havana and stayed there for 5 days.  No doubt much appreciated by the crew. It loaded sugar and rum to take back to Europe and from there it continued its round trip to Vera Cruz, Tampico – Puerto Mexico and New Orleans and then headed back to Rotterdam. Apart from the maiden HAL call at Havana it was also the first voyage of this new service.

An old postcard of the ss Maasdam for the Spanish market. She was a sister ship to the Edam.

With the First World War going on, things slowed down considerable. There was the U boat danger and some ships had been confiscated by the USA when it entered the war in 1917. But once the war was over the cargo service resumed. Then the USA started to reduce the emigrate inflow which cost Holland America a lot of money as the large passenger ships were not sailing full anymore. So the idea was born to start a passenger service to Mexico from Rotterdam calling at Spain and Portugal on the way. The idea was to cash in on the part-time labor trade when men from Portugal and Spain went to Cuba for the sugar cane harvest and back. This new service was inaugurated by the ss Edam (IV) in 1922.

The Veendam II at full speed at sea. Only one funnel was real so only one funnel smoked.

Then the company decided to get involved more extensively in cruises to the West Indies and the Veendam (II) was assigned for this work. On 18 March 1926 the ship left New York and called at Havana and then continued to Kingston – Colon – Cartagena – San Juan – Hamilton and then back to New York. So the Veendam (II) was the ship that made the first company cruise to Cuba. From then on, various ships of the company called at Havana and it continued after the war until the revolution started followed by the embargo.

The ss Arkeldyk was one of a series of Victory cargo ships purchased after the end of the war.

The last HAL ship to call at Havana was the cargo ship ss Arkeldyk which had left Rotterdam on the 18^th. of Feb. 1962 and she called at Havana – Houston – Corpus Christi – Brownsville – Galveston – Houston – Le Havre – Antwerp and then returned to  Rotterdam. Then things got political and nothing happened until 1980.

The Grand Dame of the Seas, the ss Rotterdam V made world cruises from 1959 to 1997.

Then to everybody’s amazement Holland America obtained an exemption to call at Havana as the final port of the world cruise of 1980. The ship had left New York on 09 January and after going westwards around the world arrived in Havana on the 15^th. of April where it stayed from 0700 hrs. in the morning until 18.11 hrs. in the evening. From there it sailed to Fort Lauderdale and New York to end the world cruise.

The ms Veendam IV docked at Havana yesterday. Continuing the HAL tradition.

And now we are back and the Veendam (IV) is making regular cruises to Havana from American ports. In my personal opinion, a communist is a capitalist without money, so the more we call here; the better it is for the country and its future. And we are already doing that by going to Cienfuegos tomorrow.

The weather is supposed to be similar again 80oF and 27oC with sunny skies. The sun block 30 advice remains in place.

Another day with perfect weather. The ms Zuiderdam is busy with making up the lost time from our late departure from Puerto Limon and made landfall off Cuba at 10.30 this morning. The remainder of the day we will spend curving around the west coast and then heading into the Straits of Florida. There we will look for the Gulf Stream and try to find as much current as we possibly can to get a very economic push in the back. By 4 pm. we expect about 2 knots every hour (unless the Gulf Stream has crept all the way under the Florida coast) and we should keep that all the way to Ft. Lauderdale. Giving us about an hour travelling free of charge. I calculated in one of the previous blogs that the savings can be considerable.

Thus every ship is eagerly looking for the location of the Gulf Stream. Still the general flow of the Gulf Stream is so wide that the ships are not sitting/ sailing on top of each other and fighting for the same track line. Most ships will keep a distance of about a mile, even if it considers itself not having the full advantage of the free current. But I have seen it in the past that a ship crossed the bow of my own ship while following a course line that was supposed to bring it to the axis of the Gulf Stream; at least there where its captain thought it would be. When we called the ship, we were told in no uncertain terms that we were interfering with their progress on the course ordered by the master. Nothing you can do about such focus and thus we moved our ship a little bit out of the way, in case the master suddenly had another insight of where the optimal current might have been.

I have been ranting about the weather for most of this cruise but today we had the 2^nd day that the weather was in synch with what we were expecting and what it should be on average. Just a wind force 4, sunny skies and some Cumulus clouds in the air.  We kept wind force 4 until we were past Cabo San Antonio on the west coast of Cuba and turned to the North East into the Straits of Florida; and it breezed up a little bit. The mountain range which lies over the whole island of Cuba is acting as a sort of natural border between the Caribbean Sea with its Trade Winds and the Bahamas with its cold fronts rolling in from the North East. Thus the wind in the Straits of Florida is predominantly North East and against us.  When it is a normal strength wind, wind force 4 to 6 it is not a problem and we just push against it as it generates only a low swell. But if the wind increases to Storm force then it blows against the strong current of the Gulf Stream and that can create a very nasty short swell which can make ships pitch (up and down moment of the bow) considerably. Cruise ships have to slow down then and if they don’t then it is really time to get the green apples out against the sea sickness.  But no worries today as the Aussies would say.

These are good weather – cumulus – clouds and thus every sailor loves to see them. Not to confuse with  cumulus – nimbus which are those billowing clouds which indicate rain and wind,

It being a midweek call it will be a rather quiet day with cruise ships in Ft. Lauderdale. Only the Royal Princess and the Veendam will be in port together with us, not counting the cargo ships which will be in and out all day. The whole world knows Port Everglades and Fort Lauderdale as being a major cruise ship port but it is also a major cargo port, with oil tankers and barges, container ships and even bulk carriers. The oil tankers have berths between Cruise docks 1 and 17 and the container ships and bulk carriers go up the intra-coastal. Although container ships sometimes also dock at the cruise docks if there is no cruise ship in. Especially if a container ship has its own cranes, then it does not really matter as it only needs trucks to drive in and to drive out. The ships crane will unload and load without anything needed to be stored on the dock.

By 07.00 hrs. Tomorrow morning the good ship ms Zuiderdam should be docked in Ft. Lauderdale. By 10.30 they should be making the final call for all guests to leave the ship. That will include me then as for the CBP I have to disembark as service staff with the guests. Then I will cross the street and with a 5 minute walk from dock 26 to dock 21, I should be on board the ms Veendam 30 minutes later.

It should be a balmy sunny day of 80oF or 27 oC. with no rain expected thus I will not need my umbrella.

Tomorrow there will be no blog due to my walk over the dock and getting into the swing on board the ms Veendam.

For those who would not like to be deprived of their daily dose, I suggest to klick on the link below. I have just uploaded the biography of Captain Peter Bos. He will be retiring from Holland America after 27 years. For those of you who know him, please leave a little comment on the page, I am sure he will appreciate it.

https://www.hollandamerica.com/blog/albert/current-captains-and-their-schedules/noordam-capt-peter-bos/

Good bye ms Zuiderdam with a photo showing the weather we had today (Courtesy Holland America Line)

The weather is finally acting according to what it should be and we had a glorious Caribbean Sea day. The normal trade wind is blowing, the sun is shining and there are only some normal cumulus clouds in the air. The guests are complaining that it is hot outside on deck and thus we have the correct weather. We went an hour forward last night to get back on Florida time and with staying as well, our schedule has become quite tight. Thus the Captain is keeping the pedal to the metal, as well because he had to conduct a crash stop today.

The standard setting for Pods. They pull the ship forward. We have Azi pods made by ABB. There also other company’s.

Once a year we have to conduct a crash stop to ensure that we can slow down very quickly if needed. Normally we do this before going into dry dock. But as the ships normally only go dry every 2.5 years we sometime have to do it at sea.
It means pulling the handles from full ahead with 20 knots speed to full astern and then see how long it takes before the ship has come to a complete standstill and how much distance it took to accomplish this. On regular propeller ships, it means flipping the propeller blades full to the other side, or reversing the turning of the propellers if they have fixed bladed screws. For a podded ship such as the Zuiderdam it means turning the Azipods by 180o degrees and let the propellers push the water the other way.
Azipods, when going forward, have the propellers in the front of the Pod so they have the optimum flow.

Third officer Camiel van den Berg turning the Azipods around, under the watchful eye of Captain Bart Vaartjes.

Then when they are turned 180o, then they are behind the pod and so it looks as it does with a regular ship. That was tried this morning. The maneuver can be compared with you driving your car at 70 mph. and then pulling the hand brake to avoid a collision. It works but it is not such a pleasant experience. Thus the captain announced to the guests that they might feel some vibration. The engineers are on standby to ensure that all goes well downstairs and then at 10.30, the Officer of the Watch pulled the handles.

The readout on the bridge, the speed is already down to 7 knots and the Azi pods are point aft.

When the pull of the propellers stop. You immediately get a slowdown in speed and then the de-acceleration sets in as soon as the propellers get a grip on the water, but now the other way around. The vibration starts the moment the ships speed has reduced so much (from 20 to about 7 knots) and the Azipods are now pushing water under the ship’s hull. That gives bubbles and turbulence and that causes the vibration which carries quite strongly through the ship.
We can see that a ship is coming to a standstill, as soon as the foam of the waves, caused by the reversed propeller wash starts to march forward along the hull. Once it is amidships, the ship has come to a standstill. If the the wash travels further forward then the ship is going astern.

The propeller wash is coming to the midships. the ship has stopped in the water.

The Zuiderdam stopped after 6.6 cables distance which is about 4 ships lengths. Back to your car; you drive into a garage which can park four cars in a row of your size with 70mph and then pull the hand brake. Then you manage to stop before hitting the wall. That is the idea that we do with a ship of 86000 tons of momentum.

The read out from the bridge chart plotter.

As you can see from the photo above, the ship stayed nicely on a straight line, until it had almost come to a complete stand still. Then it got caught by the Trade Wind blowing from the Starboard side and that started very quickly pushing the ship of its course. But one kick ahead and the ship was back on track. The whole happening, from planning to speeding up again took less than 10 minutes.
Today we sailed off the coast of Costa Rica, El Salvador and Nicaragua. From there we will head on a straight line for Cabo San Antonio on the west side of Cuba. We should be there sometime tomorrow morning, all depending how much push we get from the Gulf Stream which we are now nearing. The weather looks the same for tomorrow and so the guests who did not get sun burned today will have another chance tomorrow.

I could not resist this one. This is what happens when you do the same thing with a small boat. (Courtesy: Metal Craft Marine)