I was running around by 05.30 in the morning as I had supervision and support of the new junior officers on my schedule. So I had the enjoyment of seeing sunrise over Cartagena and the pilot boarding. Before twilight started there was a nice light show in the clouds of big electric discharges but with day light approaching that all disappeared. Also the rain disappeared and thus we had a nice dry day, but it was very sunny and very warm. The Zuiderdam was just ahead of us by about 15 minutes, giving just enough time for the linesmen in the port, to tie up first the one ship and then the other one. No other cruise ships in port today so it was a Holland America only show.

Sailing into Cartagena takes about an hour as the entrance to the Bay is in the South West and then you have to sail north to get to the cargo docks. For the docks where we are going, the old cargo docks, now all container, it would be so easy to cut through a canal in the west side and get us in and out in about 30 minutes. But it is the expensive part of town with all sorts of high rises (every year there seem to be more) being built and it would not help the rest of the port.  The whole of the east part of the bay, which is mostly known as the Boca Chica, is full of oil terminals, tanker docks and a lot of related industry. They all use the same entrance and they would continue to use the entrance we used this morning. So no preferential treatment for the cruise ships.

Fort on the northside as seen from the Forward mooring deck of the Veendam

Because of its natural and large sheltered harbor the area has always been a hot spot for countries that were convinced that they had to rule the world. As there were many countries who thought so, the one who was there first (or who had just kicked somebody else out) built defense structures to make sure they themselves were not going to get kicked out later. Until today those defense works are still there and the space for us to sail in, located between two forts, still has the same width as it had 500 years ago. Luckily they already thought big in those days and thus our current big ships still fit through the channel.

The light spots are the flame off towers of the Refineries  in Cartagena. To the left the Zuiderdam going ahead of us.

But it is one way traffic, so once the Zuiderdam had slipped through, we had to wait until a small cargo vessel came out and then we could go in. There is a leading light which can help you to stay in the middle of the channel but it is hardly visible due to “light” pollution by the refinery located behind the leading light beacons. They are burning off gasses which come free with the production of oil. When the oil price was still high, they caught the gas and it was sold for export. Now with the oil prices being fairly low, it does not seem to pay any more to do so and thus they burn it off. Using it for local heating is not an option either as Cartagena is already hot & warm enough by itself. But a leading light is not so much of a necessity here. As long as you are clever enough to stay between the buoys you are in good shape.

Veendam safely docked at Pier 3 in Cartagena.

Where we now dock used to be water. The old cargo docks were much deeper inland.  I still have docked there with the old Statendam in 1981 but then a few years later, the old cargo sheds were ripped down (and approx. 2 million or so rats were made homeless) and the dock foundations were filled over to provide space for container parks. New piers were then built further into the inner harbor and that is where we dock today. Once you could walk to “downtown”, well a sort of downtown, the sort of downtown sailors liked, so it was really THE downtown but now you need a tour bus or a shuttle to get in or out of the port. The “downtown” I am referring to is long gone as well as crew hardly has time to go ashore and with the increase in ships size, and same crew complement, the number of visiting crew had dwindled considerably. So now “downtown” is near the business district and we are stuck and can only look at containers. Or at the Zuiderdam being docked next to us.

The Zuiderdam departing. She came in first and she went out first.

As mentioned yesterday both ships had a short stay, as both ships have to be at the Cristobal breakwater entrance for the canal at 05.00 hrs. So we sailed out at 1 pm. and put the pedal to the metal once we were outside. We have to make the Panama Canal slot to fit in the convoy as the Canal does not wait for anybody.

Our schedule………………… subject to extremely much change:

05.00 Break water

06.00 Inside waiting for clearance.

08.00 Gatun locks

13.00 Miguel locks

17.00 Mira Flores locks

18.30 Pacific Ocean.

As you can see, no new locks, but maybe we will see the Zuiderdam using them.

We caught the tail end of the frontal system in the morning and it gave us the occasional shower on the deck until lunch time and then we were past it. Now we are slowly starting to come under the influence of the land mass of South America where much is covered by Jungle and that makes for a totally different situation. Hot and Humid with lots of electricity in the air and thus we can expect thunderstorms tomorrow. Hopefully it will happen before and after our arrival and departure in Cartagena but that is something we cannot plan for. We will only be a short while there, from 07.00 until 13.00 hrs. as we have a tight schedule afterwards to make it to the Panama Canal on time. We will meet up again with the Zuiderdam which will sail with us to the Panama Canal as she is doing the sail in – Gatun Lake – sail out routine and then goes to Colon/Cristobal for a late afternoon stay. We of course go straight through as we are on our way to San Diego.

This will be my first time going through with the new locks in operation and I harbor a small hope that we might do one of each, an old and a new one, but it is a very tiny bit of hope and a lot of wishful thinking. Thus far the Panama Canal Authority has not much been in favor of letting a cruise ship do both but “hoop doet leven” as we say in Dutch or “Hope keeps you alive”. Tomorrow during the day we will receive the transit schedule of what the Canal is planning to do with us ——— subject to extremely much change———— and then we will know more.

The planning for the Canal takes some doing and it already starts when the ship is built. As the Canal has different measurement criteria for a ship, the ship is measured at the end of its new building and then it gets a Panama Canal Tonnage Certificate. During its first ever transit; it is quite customary to get officials on board, who sail with the ship during the transit, to verify if that initial certificate is valid. They always seem to be very interested in pools and Engine sky lights as there the rules seem to vary greatly from the regular register tonnage certificate to what Panama wants. And then they return when needed.  I can understand this quite well, as cruise lines keep tinkering with their ships and here the Veendam is a good example. In 2006 we had the Club Hal added to the aft top deck, creating a lot of extra volume and then in 2008 extra cabins were added. At that time we lost a deep swimming pool but we gained a wider shallow pool and extra Jacuzzi’s. Enough changes to keep a tonnage verification officer in bonus for quite some time.  Last time I spoke to one of them (who came to check the new cabins on the aft deck of the Prinsendam) he was musing about how the new slides on the Mega Liners would fit into the equation. On the earlier ships slides had been open on the top. Now on the larger ships the higher up parts of them are enclosed, so you water-slide through a tunnel. But the big question of course was for him would an enclosed water slide bring in more money for the Panama Canal Authority. I never found out the answer but it was an intriguing thought.

This is the water slide from the Carnival Vista. Partly enclosed, partly open; What would Panama think?

For the normal routine of the ship and the transit, you have to start sending your ETA’s already 3 days before. This is something really meant for cargo ships as they are not as reliable in their scheduling as a cruise ship but the rules are the same for everybody. Then about 48 hrs. before we have to call them. This is an Oil Pollution Prevention exercise. By calling in, the Canal Authority knows that we have read the regulations and thus know what is expected of us by them in case something happens.

Getting into Cartagena takes more than an hour as we have to sail through the inside lake towards the very sheltered port of Cartagena. So tomorrow morning we will be at the pilot station of Boca Chica at 05.30 am and then sail in either before or after the Zuiderdam but that depends on what the pilots want for their docking sequence.

For the weather, it will be hot and humid and it will be everybody’s guess how much fireworks we will get out of the rain clouds.

You can see the yellow/red spots over Colombia and that means dense rain clouds. (Courtesy www.weatherchannel.com)

We are now on our way to Cartagena and with the speed we are making, we nicely “out marched” the rain. Although the clouds were in the area but that is not so bad as clouds keep the temperature down and that makes being on deck very pleasant. And you can still sun bathe, even when it is a bit cloudy as there are still rays coming through that will produce a tan.  Although quite a few guests shied away from the sun today as they got more than their fair amount yesterday.

For most of the evening we sailed between the Bahamian Islands towards the south and then during the night we crossed the end of the old Bahama Channel, to reach the Windward Passage, located between Cuba and Haiti.  We passed Cabo Maisi (the end point of Cuba) in the early morning and by the end of this afternoon we will be out of the Windward Passage and in the Caribbean Sea. This area is called the Jamaican Channel but we will not see Jamaica as we are too far to the East of it.

Our route for the two sea days.

By that time we will be coming under the full influence of the Trade Winds and that should give us about 20 knots from the East. So windy on our Port Side and nice and gentle on our starboard side.

An accident on the rise in our modern world. (Courtesy Creative Safety Supply)

Continuing with my safety story of the last two days, the last thing is to explain are near misses in safety. As I do not want to create a panic on the internet; in safety we qualify a near miss as something that could have result in an accident but it did not.  A bucket of paint started to slide but you caught it in time; somebody wants to stand on a box to change a lightbulb but somebody else saw it and got a step ladder. An electric socket had come loose but the danger was seen before somebody plugged a cable into it. etc. etc.

The challenge is to get everybody talking and provide examples of what they have seen or were involved in. We call these “learning events”. Something has happened, something did not go 100% right or something had the intrinsic potential to go wrong, but it was recognized and the situation was mitigated.  To make it work, it has to start at the Top, with the leaders, and thus it has become an established feature on our ships to have each officer come forward, starting with the captain, to explain what in his/her work situation could have gone better. As the ships are a small world onto themselves, the word soon spreads around the crew and then the rest will follow.

One way to get the crew interested is to run a safety poster competition with cash prizes.

The company is really encouraging everybody to do this and is asking each ship to provide every month 3 examples of near misses that they found, discussed, solved or learned a lesson from for the future. These are then shared fleet wide and slowly but steadily we see a reduction in the return of the same mistakes. One of the direct results is, that our accident free days are going up. We define anything that needs more than a plaster to be an accident, (that is about the only thing the crew doctor does not write a report about) and thus is it is not easy to stay on zero. But ships with 800 crew or more are now reaching 300+ days without anything happening at all. Safe work with a moving ship and so many cooks with knives and so many engineers in machinery environments it is not as easy as on the shore side and so we are really pleased with the results. But everybody is keeping focused; as our friend Murphy has a nephew on every ship and they simply hate good safety records and mistake free environments. So the safety training, the safe work planning, the safe work execution and the “learning experiences” continues and will do so in the future.

I am honored to play a little role in this all, apart from the inspecting, by training and teaching. Due to my unique position as Travelling Master I can compare the ships while I rotate around and can pick up and pass along good practices and little changes which can make a large difference in a chain of events.

So tomorrow we are at sea again, and looking at the weather chart we might lose the cloudiness later in the day but could get an isolated shower during the night or early morning.

With the frontal system passing over, we should run out of the clouds tomorrow.

By 07.30 we arrived at the anchorage area together with the ms Nieuw Amsterdam. Half Moon Cay is large enough to handle two mega liners at the same time, we do not have mega liners in our fleet, and thus the 3400 that came ashore had ample space to enjoy themselves. We did not see any lines anywhere except at the barbeque station around 1 pm. but that had more to do with the fact that everybody tends to go for lunch at the same time. Hence my personal Golden Rule on sea days, I go at 11.30 to the Lido as it normally noon time when the wave comes rolling in and that wave keeps rolling in until 13.30 hrs. and then suddenly it is all quiet again. (Except at the ice cream parlor)

The Nieuw Amsterdam off HMC.  Alongside the provision cutter Half Moon Clipper and Henry Hudson guest tender.

The wind was from the wrong direction for anchoring and thus both ships remained on the engines and floated. For an operational perfect Half Moon Cay day you need the wind from the north east, blowing over the island. Then the wind can make no swell, as there is no open sea to blow over, and the wind will push the ship away from the island so it can lay perfectly behind a stretched anchor chain. Today the wind was coming from the North West and then you are pushed towards the island and eventually end up on the beach. The island is rising so sharply out of the deep, that there is not enough room to swing around with the anchor down without hitting sand and rock somewhere. Thus we stayed on the engines and drifting in position. There was very little wind today and that made it very easy to stay in position and not to drift all over the place.

The Nieuw Amsterdam was on the shorter stay with a last tender scheduled for 14.30 as they had to make Ft. Lauderdale on time; it being the end of the cruise, and thus they were given the use of the large shore tenders. We were here all day and thus we provided our own transport during a very nice but very warm day.  It got warmer and warmer while the day progressed as the wind decided to almost die down completely. So it was a very tropical day, but then we are on a warm weather cruise so we are delivering according schedule.

Back to Yesterday and safe working on board.

The list of five points yesterday indicated the way the company has setup its safety philosophy. First train the crew and then review with the crew involved what the challenge of the work is. As most of us are over 25 we forget things and then we make sure we also review and complete check list so that nothing is forgotten. Then we carry out the work while the supervisor is required to check in to see if all goes well. The frequency of checking really depends on the sort of work. If a sailor is painting, the Bo ‘sun maybe checks once a day, if it is working aloft, it might be once an hour but if the work pertains to a tank entry, then there is the requirement to have constant supervision present. Sitting in an enclosed steel tank is a lot more dangerous than happily sitting on a chair painting in the outside air. When a more complicated job has been carried out, then there is a review  to see if any lessons can be learned to implement next time and then do an even better job.

Things go seldom wrong, but often there is the potential for something to go wrong and from that we can learn.

For that review, we also check if there were any “near misses”.  You should NOT see that in the context of “the ship almost sank” but in the context of “I forgot to tie up the paint bucket and it almost tipped off the shelf”. Those things can bring up very valuable insights as the persons who carry out the work normally know better what is going on than the supervisor. To make sure that mistakes are also being reported and discussed, you have to create a no-blame culture. And that is probably the hardest part of the whole safety process, as in general the world always looks for somebody to blame when something goes wrong and then demands instant punishment; mostly without having checked the facts and details of what exactly happened. Holland America is quite far advanced with creating a very open safety culture and more about that tomorrow.

Today at 5 pm. we will start our journey to Cartagena, which will take us two days. First we sail through the Grand Bahama Bank, then into the Caribbean Sea on a south westerly course until we curve around the North West point of Columbia and then we approach Cartagena from the West.  Weather for the Caribbean Sea:  Same weather as today, with a chance of cloudiness. If you look at the weather photo you see there is a frontal system approaching but if it does not move too fast, we might be able to outrun it and then the sunshine continues all the way to Cartagena. If not we get some rain. That might not please the guests but it will please the ships Bo’sun as it will get the salt off the ship.

The frontal system is just coming over Hispaniola. We a bit of luck we might out run it if it moves slowly. (Photo courtesy, 22 Oct. 2016 The Weather Channel)

We had a warm day today and we did arrive as we wished, just before 07.00 at the regular Holland America dock, Pier 26. So everything worked out as planned. Always nice as a turn over port creates a very hectic day, with stores and provisions being loaded for the whole trans canal, contractors and service people, bunkering of fuel and a myriad of other items which can only take place in a end of cruise port. Mainly because there are no guests in the way and all service is reduced to a bare minimum. At least from 08.00 until noon time after which the ship gears up again with embarkation.  So this morning I saw technicians crawling under coffee machines, others looking concerned with blue boxes which are supposed to measure something and did not, and service people bringing on board spare parts where in some cases brought a big smile to an engineer’s face. Plus a whole conga line of others, of which nobody really knows what they do, but of whom you soon find out that they were not in attendance, when something does not work, or something was not brought on board.

I had my regular end of cruise visit with my friends of the Customs and Border Protection again. I am not a complete crew member and I am not a guest either; and to solve this vague position the deep thinkers in the immigration business have come up with the beautiful designation of the “Non-Revenue- Passenger”.  What that exactly it means is anybody’s guess but the end result is that at the end of each cruise I have to march off with the In Transit Guests, show my face to receive a friendly nod and then march back on board again, as soon as the CBP is convinced everybody except the real crew is off the ship. That has the magical name of “the zero count”. This cruise we had 254 in transit guests on board (that is including me) so there was quite a bit of marching (or in some cases scootering and rollating) going on before the supervisor of the CBP was satisfied and officially cleared the ship.

Very creative but not exactly safe.

As mentioned in an earlier blog, part of what I am doing this time is going through all the work practices on board to see if we all comply with the Company Rules (which includes all the legal stuff of course) and if all safe working practices are being followed – at all times -. We have roughly 50 different nationalities on board and each group has a different understanding of what “safe” is and what precautions should be taken. A crewmember can  have a moral culture shock going around in his/her head if a company practice of safe operations is considered silly or stupid or over the top back at home. So there is a constant push from ships management to engrain everybody with the mantra: You arrive with 10 fingers and you go home with 10 fingers.

The challenge is that if you see the same ship, do the same work, have the same procedures to follow and deal with the same crew every day, then in the end you do not see the Tree’s for the Forest anymore. (And the other way around as well I suppose) thus a pair of fresh eyes, with the experience of where crew tries to slack off, bypass or ignore procedures (yes crew are human as well, just like everybody on the shore side)and then raise the spotlight on those items.

Safety Meeting before every job, however small the job might be,

Apart from law enforced required safety training, we also have a lot of company safety rules and they get hammered into a crew member by several methods.

1. The 15 minute safety trainer. Each supervisor has to conduct those and discuss, in a cycle, issues as hard hats, safety googles, bending, lifting, and chemicals etc.etc.
2. The Risk management procedure. Before each work challenge is carried out, there is a (brief) meeting about the way the work will be carried out, what the dangers are and what is needed to mitigate these dangers. Including what PPE is needed.
3. Checklists to fill out, commonly known as PTW’s or Permit to Work
4. Supervision and correction on the job
5. Reporting of missed chances, from which we all can learn again.

To be continued tomorrow.

We sailed just after 16.00 hrs. and shot straight across the Straits of Florida towards the Great Isaac Lighthouse where we will enter the Bahamian Islands. As tomorrow we will be at Half Moon Cay, our private island. We are to be ready to commence tender service at 08.00 hrs. and we will be joined by the Nieuw Amsterdam for the day.  Weather for tomorrow:  84oF / 29oC, with very little wind. It is going to be a very tropical day.

Today we have our final day at sea and are sailing along the East coast of Florida towards Fort Lauderdale, and once again we are battling the Gulf Stream.  I can even feel it. The wind is from the North East and thus partly against the general flow of the water and that gives a strange movement to the ship.  On the waves caused by the wind, it should either move or not, but now it moves on occasion and that is caused by  the wind moving against the swell at times. Sometimes damping them out, sometimes enhancing them, then you get this moment of will she roll or will she not and you cannot really predict it. In the course of the evening we should get a bit of wave left over from Hurricane Nicole who created havoc near Bermuda a few days ago and whose wave field is not completely gone yet. It won’t be bad weather but some clever guests were already packing in the early afternoon.

To get as little opposite Gulf Stream as possible we on a SSW heading trying to get under the coast as soon as we can. At noon time we passed Jacksonville and now we are roughly abeam of Orlando passing a village called Palm Bay which brings us in sight of the shore line. Not much to see and not very easy to see what might be there, as Florida is fairly flat. By tomorrow we are in Fort Lauderdale and that will be the end of the cruise. To send everybody home with at least a bit of education, the Cruise Director had me scheduled for my Holland America History talk and now all who attended know where the Veendam came from.  And thus I have done my good deed for the day.

We are coming today from the north, which is a more unusual route for a cruise ship. Most ships that go to Fort Lauderdale are coming from the East out of the North Providence channel (under Freeport and above Nassau) or out of the Straits of Florida from the south. Cruise ships tend to all converge at nearly the same time at the pilot station of Port Everglades as we all want to be docked by 07.00 when the regular work day starts in the port. Especially around Christmas is can be very congested at the pilot station as a lot of cruise lines change their regular cruise schedule to offer a Christmas or holiday cruise, with the happy day at least falling after departure.  8 to 10 ships in port together have happened.

One of those busy days in port, sometime in the past. Eight large ships alongside and one small one sailing down the intracoastal. (Photo courtesy: www.airliners.net.)

On such an occasion the Harbor Master creates a very tight schedule for pilotage and docking, normally 15 minutes between each ship and simply orders a ship to be there at the given time. If not, then it can wait until the rest has gone in. Tomorrow we will not have that challenge as we are supposed to be the only one in port, at least according to the schedule published by the port. Which means we can arrive when we want and dock at the most opportune time. As long as work can start at exactly 07.00 hrs.

Sailing into Port Everglades is almost right on the 270o. But of course they had to make it a little bit harder and thus we have to steer 267o

For the captain the challenge will be to line up into the leading lights before going in. Normally what we do, when coming from the East of South, is to steer a bit to the south of the lights and then let the Gulf Stream push us into it. That makes it very easy to adjust the course little by little until we have found the perfect balance. Now coming from the north we have to “push” into the Gulf Stream and find the perfect angle or steer south and let us be pushed back again. The maneuver of the day will really depend on what other ships or small craft are in the area. The drift angle we need can be quite considerable, depending on how close the Gulf Stream is flowing near the sea buoy. I have been coming in on a course of 242o while the Leading lights want 267o and it was only getting slowly less by the time we passed the sea buoy. I do not think it will be that extreme tomorrow, but it is going to be an interesting arrival as always.

Weather for tomorrow: A hot and sunny day with no clouds predicted and noon temperatures of around 86oF or 30oC.  Not that great for travelling or for sightseeing.

Charleston is a port that captains really like; main reason the cruise ship terminal is very close to open sea so you do not have to get out of bed so early. Get to the bridge by 07.00 hrs. and you are docked at 07.45 hrs. Charleston is a port which the crew likes very much as you almost dock into downtown. Once you have walked past the Customs house you are there. I think a lot of captains in the past must have liked Charleston because looking at the size of the Customs house there must have been a lot of trade here.  And thus a lot of import fees and it looks like that a Customs officer in the mists of time invested some of those fees in a Tax – Temple which would have made the old Greeks very jealous.

Now this is a Customs house to make any bank manager really jealous.

I know Charleston fairly well as I once spent 8 weeks here  with the Nieuw Amsterdam in lay-up. In 2000 we sold the Nieuw Amsterdam (III) to the freshly resurrected United States Lines and it became the Patriot. The ship was meant for Hawaii cruises and was to serve as the “training & test ship” for two new builds which were under construction at Pascagoula. Normally this would not have been possible as the American law requires for coastal trade ships built in the USA, but an exemption was given as there were no home-built modern cruise ships available, and this was the way to kick start an American Flag cruise ship company.  We handed the ship over in autumn 2000 and I stayed for a while to train the American Officers who had no experience with the modern technique of a cruise ship. After six weeks my little team of Deck, Engine and Hotel went home and the Patriot started cruising around the Hawaiian Islands.

This is what happens after 9 months of un-attended teak wood decks.

After nine months I was sent back to the ship as the company had gone bankrupt. I think that the management of the USL had not correctly calculated how difficult it would be to start a modern cruise venture from nothing.   It is not so easy to run a cruise company and it is even more complicated if it is with a new concept and with several new builds on the way at the same time. So the Nieuw Amsterdam came back from Hawaii and ended up in Charleston. While the office was thinking about what to do with the ship, I had a group of about 80 crew to keep the ship going, try to get it back to working order again and spruce it up. A few months in layup in a humid climate without air-conditioning are not good for a ship.

A nice organisational muddle. Dutch name, Nassau Flag and the American eagle still on the funnel.

As a captain you do not have much to do when a ship does not sail, when it has no guests, when it really is not a ship as such. Our official safety routine was…………. “Run off the ship” if something goes wrong, as we did not have enough manpower to raise complete fire teams. We were only a skeleton crew and the ship was considered to be in unmanned lay-up. So my volunteered job was to drive the shuttle bus. Going shopping for the Bo ‘sun and Carpenters (The manager of Home Depot declared me a Saint after a few visits at $ 1000 a call) take crew to hospital and do all sorts of other things needed to keep our little enterprise going. Plan A was to get docking rights in Hamilton Bermuda and start New York, Bermuda cruises. That was a good idea as the N ships of 1983/84 had especially been designed for that purpose but never used as such because Alaska cruising really took off around that time.

Then came the option to charter (and later sell) the ship off to a Greek company who sub- chartered the ship out to Thomson Cruises which is a package holiday operator in England. They must have liked what they got as later the Noordam and the Westerdam went that way as well (Thomson Spirit, Thomson Celebration and Thomson Dream).

Today was the first time that I have been back to Charleston since 2001 and luckily it was not as warm as 15 years ago when it was the deep of summer. Today the guests had a beautiful day and it looks for tomorrow, a sea day, our luck will be holding as well.

The small heatwave caused by the balance of high and low pressure areas is creating beautiful weather today. There are only some clouds in the sky, there is a gentle breeze which makes it pleasant on deck and the temperatures  reached a balmy 20oC / 68oF at noon time and that is not bad at all for this time of the year.  We have no hurricane to worry about yet and thus we can happily sail towards Charleston South Carolina where we will arrive tomorrow morning.

As I mentioned an upset Chief engineer yesterday, it is now time to explain what we do to keep him as happy as possible. When we go up the coast from anywhere north of Cabo San Antonio on the West side of Cuba, we try to find the center of the Gulf Stream and then let it push us forward. If we can find the exact center or Axis then we can get up to four knots of current. Especially in the section between Key West and Fort Lauderdale. Before and after that area the Gulf Stream is not so concentrated. If a ship has 16 knots to maintain and it gets 4 knots of bonus speed from the current, then the engines only have to produce 12 knots, which saves a lot of fuel and that makes a Chief engineer very happy.

This is the average direction of the Gulf Stream. Coming down from New York you have to sail through at least part of it.

When going south towards Fort Lauderdale or into the Straits of Florida we try to avoid this center of the Gulf Stream by either sailing on the Grand Bahama Banks side when going to the East Caribbean when coming north of Cuba, or staying close to the Florida coast when going to Florida ports or down to the Gulf of Mexico or the West Caribbean.

That is what we are doing today; creeping closer and closer towards the East Coast of the Carolinas and later of Florida. In that way we hope to reduce the opposing current to less than 2 knots and if we are lucky we might even get a counter current. I use the word “lucky” as it is not all science here. We get chartlets made by NOAA which indicate the average location of the current and we have chartlets with the general pattern of the current. But one good hurricane coming through and the Gulf Stream can be completely different or even gone. Hurricanes can push water in a different direction or “suck” water away from a location somewhere else and then the current will go that way to restore the balance.

I sailed once from Norfolk to Half Moon Cay, right after a Hurricane had come through, and there was no Gulf Stream at all; instead I had two knots of current with me all the way down until I sailed between the Bahamian islands. It took two full days before the Gulf Stream came back to its regular flow.  As you can understand I had a very happy Chief Engineer at that moment.

Even when the Gulf Stream is flowing normally, we still do not always know the correct location as the Axis of the Gulf Stream can vary quite quickly from being close to Florida to moving all the way over to the East and being close to the Grand Bahama Bank. To get it exactly right is sometimes as much as throwing a dart at the chart, as conducting a deep study of all the information available. What still works the best is to make a plan and then when there, to let the ship “feel” where the current is by going a bit off track to starboard or to port and observe what happens.

This is the Gulf Stream as indicated by its temperature. The more we can stay in the green part or on the edge of the orange part, the less adverse current we have.

When we are coming closer to Charlestown it is not so much of an issue as the Gulf Stream is still very wide and thus close to the coast we will feel not much more than 0.5 of a knot. But at lunch time we were in the middle of it with two knots and that gave the navigators a good idea of where the Axis should be when we sail back into open waters tomorrow evening. Then the trick will be to stay out of the thick of it.

Weather for tomorrow: Nice and warm but not too warm. Clear skies with noon temperatures of 24oC / 75oF and a gentle breeze.

Well the weather forecast of a sunny but chilly day did not exactly happen. It was sunny but New York experienced a small heat wave today and the temperature rose to 79oF, hardly cold autumn weather. But it was all to the advantage of the guests and that is the only thing which really matters.

I stayed on the ship as I am doing a complete sweep of the Veendam for the captain. Deck by deck, locker by locker, space by space, and that takes up a lot of time. Looking at maintenance status, safety routines and compliance and anything that might need attention and which has not received the focus as the crew as they are busy with other priorities. A fresh pair of eyes can be very valuable, especially as I know this ship inside out, having been captain on it from 2004 to 2008. So I did today the outside decks from the top all the way down to the lower promenade deck. Taking advantage of the sunny weather and being able to walk around in a T shirt instead of a winter coat.

New York Skyline with the Empire State Building and the ventilation towers of the Holland Tunnel in the foreground

The nice sunny weather also created one of the best sail – aways from New York I have ever seen. With only a gentle breeze blowing it was very pleasant outside and with the setting sun shining on Manhattan, the scenery was nothing short of spectacular.

This is what 2 knots of current does. Barely out of the pier and instead of being in the middle we have already drifted south and are half way past our dock.

This morning the Veendam docked with slack tide which means there was no current running in front of the piers. So the ship could just shoot in without any danger of bumping into pier 90 on the portside or pier 88 on the starboard side. On departure we had a few knots of ebb running and that made it a bit more complicated to get out. The moment the stern comes outside the pier, it will push the stern back against the dock as we were starboard side alongside. Thus the trick was to angle the stern almost against the opposite pier, then go astern, and use the current to bring the ship back in line up with the pier and then just keep going astern until clear.

The old Holland America Line Pier. In 1964 the most modern passenger and cargo terminal in the world.

And then we sailed down the river. Apart from seeing the Empire State building from several angles, I was mostly interested in seeing the old Holland America Line Pier, Pier 40 at middle Manhattan. The pier is now is in use for various activities which have nothing to do with the sea anymore. A quick look at Wikipedia told me, that it is now being used as a parking garage and a sports facility. It is home to the New York Knights of the American National Rugby League but has a lot of other sports going as well.

Ellis Island until 1954 the main entry for emigrants by sea into the New World.

On the other side is of course Ellis Island where Holland America landed thousands of emigrants. The ships would stop off the island, the emigrants would go off and the ships would continue with the First and Second or Tourist class passengers to Hoboken docks where the company piers were situated until it finally moved over to Pier 40 at the Manhattan side. By that time Ellis Island was long closed.  Next to it is Liberty Island with the Statue of Liberty which was the main attraction for our crew on the forward deck. They all knew about it but as Holland America seldom calls at New York anymore, very few of the newer crew had ever seen it.

We have for New York, two pilots on board. One is the docking pilot, who does only the docking/undocking of the ship and is especially on board in case tugboats are needed. Today he had an easy day as they ship did it by itself with the thrusters. As soon as the ship was safely lined up, this pilot left and the River pilot of Sandy Hook pilot took over to guide the ship to open sea. That will take approximately three hours and thus we should be near Ambrose Lighthouse around 19.30 hrs.

A lot of excited crew on deck and as usual our entertainers are the most excitable among them. These three could not resist to stage a photo shoot with Manhattan in the background.

From there we go south and today the chief engineer was lamenting the fact that the ship will go against the Gulf Stream. First there will only be a weak influence but the closer we come to Fort Lauderdale the stronger the resistance will get. And thus he ran to run an extra engine to maintain the average speed needed and that costs fuel and that makes a Chief Engineer very unhappy. Tomorrow we are at sea for the whole day and then we visit Charleston, South Carolina.  Weather is supposed to be very good again and that should bring a very nice day on board.

Today we spent a quiet day at sea, with very nice weather although it felt a bit windy at times. But that is more or less caused by the relative wind on deck. The ship is only making about 10 knots of speed and the wind is only blowing at about 10 knots of wind velocity but they are at times opposite to each other and then the combined relative wind on deck is 20 knots. That is considered a Fresh Breeze in sailors jargon and it feels real ”fresh”  as it is a cold and nippy wind, winter is definitely on its way. Hence we are getting away from the area.

Information with plotted sightings until 2003. Not much has changed since then. The green angled line to the lower right hand side is the vessel traffic separation scheme, which all ships have to follow when going south from Boston. Diagram courtesy NOAA

Making only 10 knots of speed has two reasons, first if we go full speed, we arrive in New York in the middle of the night and then we are alongside until dawn with hardly anybody going ashore. (Except some crew of course) The 2^nd and much more important reason are the Right Whales. All the way from Boston, to Nantucket Island and then partly towards New York, we are sailing through their habitat. With a fair chance of hitting one of them if we go too fast.

The Right whale is one of the more peculiar ones among all the whale species out there. They tend to be completely oblivious of what is going on around them. The Humpback whale, which we encounter very frequently, reacts to engine sounds and vibration and will dive. So as long as we keep a good look out and change course on time, we do not have any issues with them and they not with us.

The Right whale does not do that, it just sits, floats and plays around regardless what happens around it. According to scientists, the mating rituals are different to other whales as well as they seem to engage in group sex; and people (with experience) say that when you are involved with that nobody seems to pay any attention to anything else anymore.  Because they do not take any notice of the outside world, they were a very easy prey for the Whalers in the old days and as a result there are only about 400 left. And with all the protection in place the population is not growing very much.

Apart from that we do not want to lose any of them, we cannot afford to lose any of them as they are very close to extinction, whatever their mating rituals might be. So the ships have to keep a very good look out and go slow to have time to see them when they are floating around, as they are far less active than a Humpback which tends to put up a show whenever they can. To see the Right Whales you need time and thus we go slow.

To help with this we all have speed rules in the conservation area’s and the USCG maintains a listening, reporting and advise station outside the Boston area where they collect all the data and make announcements of where the last sightings have been. And there is a Vessel Traffic Separation scheme which insures that all ships follow the same “highway at sea” and thus reduce the chances of an close encounter.

If you see them, then they are easily recognizable with the white callosities on the head area. Photo by Brian Skerry. Courtesy of www.whaleman.org

Because they move so little and there are so few we seldom see them and thus each sighting is important. We keep the ship on hand steering where needed so we can change course without delay and at all times one officer and one quartermaster keep a sharp lookout while the 2^nd quartermaster is behind the wheel and the other officer looks after the navigation. When sightings come in we even bump up the number of officers by adding a Sr. Officer to the team for oversight.

We do not have to go slow everywhere but it is of course much easier to schedule the ship for a slow run between two ports instead of putting the Captain under pressure of having to make up speed as soon as the ship is outside whale waters.

With that speed of 10 knots we will arrive at 04.00 hrs. tomorrow morning at the Sandy Hook pilot station and from there sail up the Hudson. At 05.30 we will pass under the Verrazano Bridge and will dock around 06.30 at Pier 88 in New York. There we will stay until 16.00 hrs. Weather is looking good, with partly cloudy skies and temperatures in the high fifties. We will be in port with the Carnival Sunshine which has New York as a turn over port for making her last Canada & New England cruise.