This time the weather forecast followed the forecasted schedule and we got exactly what was expected. Based on that, the captain could also decide to make the call and stay for the day. When we arrived things were pretty miserable with strong winds from the South West and a lot of rain around us. During the night the winds had been very strong here and thus the waves were still quite high. But shortly after 8 am. the rain was gone and the winds slowly started to abate. Making it possible for the shore tenders to come alongside and start ferrying the guests over to the Island. With a bit of a bumpy ride, but a very short bumpy ride.

The winds will continue to die down during the coming night and on arrival Fort Lauderdale it is supposed to be nearly wind still. So by next cruise the ship might be on a 3 day cycle which will help us dodge the strong a wind days in port. We will see, or better said the ship will see, as I will not be there.

I am transferring tomorrow to the Zuiderdam until March 19 and then hope to return to the Eurodam to continue my work here. The Zuiderdam has asked me to come over and help out with preparing for an inspection and as “higher up” thought that was a good idea, there I go. So tomorrow I will walk off the gangway, turn right cross the road and will walk straight up the Zuiderdam gangway. (After of course having successfully navigating security)

The Zuiderdam is on berth 21 and we are at the usual Holland America Line berth at 26. These berths get assigned by the harbor master office and if there are only a few ships in, then it is an easy gig. They all go to their own terminal and the only thing the harbor master has to do is to decide the entry sequence in such a way that it makes it as easy as possible for the pilots and captains to bring the ships in. Some – times that requires for a ship to arrive earlier than the captain had intended but so be it.

The lay out of the port of Port Everglades. Berths 7 to 15 are normally tanker docks and anything higher than 26 is normally for cargo ships and tugboats.  29 is also a cruise terminal but only used when it is very busy.

It gets more complicated when we have 6, 7 or 8 cruise ships in. Then ships are sometimes moved to other berths, depending on their size.  With ships the size of the Oasis class, there is only one berth (nbr. 18, 17, 16) which can handle them and thus the whole setup has to be worked around them.  Also a Carnival ship takes up 2 berths, 19 and 20 and if they want to have that berth then they have to come in before an Oasis Class and before a ship scheduled for 21. Once in, then it is very difficult to get out again as nbrs. 18 and 21 take up a lot of space from the middle docking basin. Princess is normally on 6, 5, and 4 and will always have one ship there. Then that leaves the rest. Holland America has medium sized ships compared to the big boys and thus we are sometimes moved to the other berths. 21, 22, 24, 25. Tomorrow there are only five and as a result the puzzle was solved as follows:

Ship                                                       Pilot                       Berth

Harmony of the Seas                      05.00 hrs.             18 portside alongside. (Biggest cruise ship in the world)

Eurodam                                              05.30 hrs.             26 Starboard

Caribbean Princess                          05.45 hrs.             02 Starboard

Zuiderdam                                          06.00 hrs.             21 portside (Smallest cruise ship in port)

Independence of the Seas          06.15 hrs.             25 portside

As you can see all ships are fairly early and that has to do with the fact that they all want to have the gangway out by 07.00 hrs. when CBP and Longshoremen are starting their regular day.

Thus tomorrow the Eurodam will finish her cruise at 07.00 hrs. and start embarkation at 11.30 hrs. for the next cruise. This will be a sort of “around Cuba” cruise, sailing via Half Moon Cay and then down to Grand Cayman and Cozumel.  The Zuiderdam will also call at Half Moon Cay at the same day but then dive into the south Caribbean to visit Oranjestad as their next port. I will let you know in the coming days how they will “dive south”.

Today we are sailing back towards Florida and are on our way to Half Moon Cay our own private island. We are taking the outside route again, aiming for the North side of the Bahamian Islands. Then at the last minute we will dive inside and sail along Cat Island towards Half Moon Cay. That is not really the islands name; it is officially Little San Salvador, as it is a smaller version of San Salvador Island which lays more to the North East. San Salvador Island is supposedly the island were Columbus discovered the new world. I say supposedly as there are several other islands which lay the same claim to the same fame.  And nobody really knows the truth. Columbus did land somewhere in the area in 1492 and did discover the new world although he thought he was in India. He only later found out that he was not there but had stumbled into a new piece of Real Estate and nobody really understood what it was.

That honor came to a gentleman called Amerigo Vespucci, he figured out that this newly discovered land was not part of the Far East but something separate and as a result the Americas are now named after him and not after Columbus.  Maybe not fair but then the Vikings were there way before Columbus and maybe it should have been called Erickson land. On the west side the Chinese came to the Vancouver area before 1492 and thus the land should have been named after the Chinese admiral who led the (large fleet) that got there. But as is the case most of the time, the guy who is the best in public relations gets most of the credit. As Amerigo was also a cartographer he could put any name on new land and thus put his own onto it.

The chance we still find new land, even if it is only a reef, is very remote as with satellite cameras and with google world Omni present, each piece of land has been well photographed. There are still new names given to certain features; it is a tradition to give long serving Environmentalists and scientists who work in Antarctica the name of a glacier. There are still plenty out there without a name so no scientist has to despair for the time being. Although the question is, with the current warming up of the earth, if there will be enough left in the future to continue this tradition.

For sailors the only real option left to have something named after him or her is to find a reef or something similar. That can be done by running onto it (not appreciated by the boat owner normally) or to try and get it officially approved by the Cartography industry such as the NOAA.  I have been told, anecdotally, that the rock which Capt. Schettino found while sailing passed Isla Giglio is now named by the locals after him. Probably the result of so many tourists asking the locals were it exactly is and how to get there to take a selfie. I do not think that I would want to get immortalized that way.

As it is now so long ago I can tell a little story: I tried it myself a long time ago. Not to run aground but to get my name on the chart. In 1986 when I was 3^rd officer on the ss Rotterdam, I saw in the chart a rock which was called the Api Rock, in an area called Red Wood Bay north of Cape Decision. My nick name in those days, a Dutch short cut for Albert was Appie, so here was my chance. I submitted to the NOAA a request for a spelling correction Api to Appi and waited to see what would happen. A friend of mine in the USCG kept an eye on its progress as he thought it was quite funny. Well it made it through the first review and I kept my fingers crossed. Then there was somewhere a cleaver clog who checked it out and it did not make it to the approval for the next chart issue. As a matter of fact, the name Api Rock disappeared for a time completely from the chart.  I do not know who or what Api was but that was not the idea either.

Tomorrow the captain is not going to try to get a reef named after him, as a matter of fact we are not going to anchor at all but stay on the engines to avoid that chance. We were supposed to have Easterly winds which would have kept the ship behind the anchor; but we have a new cold front coming through from the North West and that means if we would anchor, the ship would drift onto the beach. By staying on the engines we can make a good lee for the shore tenders and stay nicely in deep water. The first tenders will come alongside and start ferrying the guests ashore by 08.00 hrs.  So the weather is going to be a mixed bag; windy but later subsiding, dry with a chance of a shower during the day.

Most of the Caribbean Islands do not change their clocks at all and thus are an hour behind Florida during the winter months when North America goes to winter time. That means that on the first night out the ships clocks go one hour forward and that gives a very quiet morning in the Lido. This morning it only got busy after 08.30 while on port days (or days with an hour back) the place is already hopping at 06.30 – 07.00 hrs.  So this morning it was quiet as predicted and I could breakfast in silent splendor and luxury. There was not much reason for the guests to be early as there was absolutely nothing to see. It was not until about 09.00 that the Eurodam sailed clear from under a weather system with very dark and low hanging clouds. But as the clouds had not wind in them, there was very little swell and thus it did not affect anybody very much.

Because the North Atlantic was so nice and quiet, the captain had opted for the short route sailing above the Grand Bahama Bank. That is the shorter route but if it is wobbly then going north of Cuba gives you a much calmer ride until late in the afternoon of the first sea day. So most captains go that way then, placing guests comfort above saving a few pennies on fuel. But it was not needed this time so we took the short route as we need every bit of speed available to make the time up from yesterday’s late departure.

Although I had hoped that everybody could make it to the ship on time yesterday, and to the other ships as well, this was not to be. Somehow 24,000 guests coming and going caused a hiccup in the airport and airplane supply system and not everybody was going to make it to the various ships by 16.00 hrs. thus the VHF’s starting squawking around 15.15 hrs. relaying the bad news coming from the airport. Normally the captain then has to make a quantified decision about sailing or not sailing.  Are the wait and the cost incurred balancing out against people reduced satisfaction and economic sense?

Yesterday it was a sort of joint decision with all the captains opting for staying and waiting. It also meant that our captain had to “wriggle” a lot less as the Celebrity Summit was staying as well but would still sail just before us. Giving us a lot more room to back down the Intracoastal water way to the turning basin and from there to open sea.  So instead of 16.00 hrs. the whole parade started at 17.00 hrs. and shortly there after in 5 minute intervals a big cruise ship popped out of the Port Everglades break waters.

Nice for the guests to have made it to the ship but it is not good for the fuel as on the run from Fort Lauderdale to Grand Turk the regular weather is not helping. Current and wind are standard against the general direction of where the ship is going, so it has to push and push and will never get a helping hand, until we start the return voyage. So this morning the navigators were muttering amongst themselves that the ship was having a hard time making the speed and whether another engine should be called on line.

Calling for extra engines is always worth a discussion as there are a lot of factors to consider and if you get it right, you can save a considerable amount of fuel. So the question was, for how much speed do we have to compensate taking into consideration whether the adverse wind and current will increase during the day, remain the same, or decrease?  So do we call for an extra 12 cylinder engine or a 16 cylinder engine? Shall we do it now and stop the engine later on again when we are back on the schedule again or shall we wait until we reach the moment when the average speed to maintain = maximum speed / output of the engines? And then just keep it running until arrival in port.

Experience helps a lot if you have done this route a number of times as you then roughly know what will happen during the remainder of the day with wind, weather and current. Thus the navigators decided to wait until the captain would make an appearance and then let him make the decision.

With that decision we will be sure that we arrive on time at the pier of Grand Turk Island for an all day long call. The weather gurus are predicting a sunny day with a very small chance of a shower, quite windy but that will keep the Temperatures around 77oF / 26oC.

And thus we are back on board again and shortly back at sea again.  This morning I boarded the ms Eurodam for a 3 week visit.  I never know what sort of cabin I will get as it depends on how full the ship is. Holland America is doing very well with its cruises at the moment and the Eurodam is full to capacity. As a result I was assigned to the pilot cabin which is located right behind the bridge.  The typical thing about pilot cabins is, that most of them are inside cabins. In general this has the full agreement of the pilots fraternity as pilots look enough out of the window while being on the bridge so their interest in having a window or porthole in the cabin is of very low priority. What a pilot wants is a quiet cabin, quiet 24 hours a day so he/ she can sleep when needed and an inside cabin will also ensure that it is dark 24 hours a day to obtain a good sleep.  For the same reasons I am always quite content to stay in a pilot cabin but will opt for a guest cabin if there are extra navigators on board. It is more important for them to be close to their work than for me.

MS Eurodam as seen departing from New York earlier in her career. (Photo courtesy Holland America Line)

The ms Eurodam is a sister ship of the ms Nieuw Amsterdam and together they form the Signature Class of the company. These ships are an evolution of the Vista Class and in the same way as the Koningsdam, being the first of the three Pinnacle Class ships has a lot of features which have proven successful on the Signature class. It also goes backwards as the music concept developed for the Pinnacle Class has also been introduced on the Eurodam. Thus the ship has the Lincoln Centre for classical music and the Billboard on board for the duelling piano’s.  Also the Northern lights disco has been removed and the Gallery Bar put in its place.

Our schedule for this cruise.

The Eurodam makes a variation of East and West 7 day Caribbean cruises and today the ship will sail with a full house toward Grand Turk Island, San Juan, St Thomas and then on the way back call at our private island Half Moon Cay. Then the next cruise is a West Caribbean cruise. The good ship is under the command of Captain Werner Timmers, who I have known since 1984 as he joined the company three years after me.  He will have to wriggle the ship out of Fort Lauderdale today and I use the word wriggle as the port is filled to capacity with cruise ships. When I arrived with the taxi this morning, it was an advanced form of controlled mayhem in the port with a rush hour flow of traffic to get all the guests, crew and supporting people in and out, not to count the provisions, supplies and recyclables.

Because we are actually not in Fort Lauderdale but in Port Everglades, this whole headache inducing organization is being controlled and streamlined by the Sheriff of Broward County. I assume they now have a sort of dedicated and very large Cruise department in their organization as there are always a very large number of patrol cars, motor cycles and even one or two patrol boats out from the early morning to late evening.

In port today in the cruise ship line up is : Eurodam, Carnival Conquest, Freedom of the Seas, Harmony of the Seas, Celebrity Summit, Island Princess, Royal Princess and then last  but not least the local cruise ferry the Bahama Express.  If all ships would be full then a rough count would indicate that there would be some 24000 guests coming and going today in the port. I wonder how the airport is coping as Ft. Lauderdale airport is a very nice one but the check in area’s are a bit tight for such an influx of guests.

But as usual the port will work its wonders and all the ships will sail today as per schedule.  I will spend the rest of my day talking to captain, staff captain and training officer to get my own show on the road and to see where my activities will assist the ship in the best way possible.  The weather looks good and we should have a nice start of the cruise.