Spring might be in the air as we had another sunny and hazy day a today and you could walk outside without a coat on. The coverall and helmet was sufficient to “brave” the weather. It also makes the shipyard works happier as they can do their dusty work outside.

A long queue entering the HAL ware house to comply with the labor law of daily logging the working hours.

And the crew was very happy as we are still living in two places and we have to leave the ship regulary. Some of the offices are still off the ship as the computer network is not yet fully up to speed. This means for the crew there is a daily pilgrimage to the shore side office of the Crew Officer to log in their hours from yesterday. Then it is in parade back to the ship for receiving the job orders for the coming day.

The Asst. Housekeepers handing out the daily orders to the Cabin Stewards.

While the weather gods are keeping things dry, it is now the shipyard who are making things wet. The promenade deck with the lifeboats has been completed and they have started hosing down the bulkheads and the boats. Then there will be some more touch up with paint again and then all the protective covering will be removed from the lifeboats. Everywhere the lifeboats are touching the davits arms there is still padding and plastic in place.

This is what a sailor likes to see: hosing down the decks and making it nice.

The lifeboats are already in use as the 2^nd officer Training has organized a Lifeboat Boat Assistant course for those who are part of the lifeboat crew. The Commander and Asst. Commander get official training and certification shore side and need on board only refresher training. For the other lifeboat crew, in depth training is given on board and they also will receive a certification. As the crew has been coming from all the other ships they were not necessary involved with lifeboats there and thus they still have to go through this training. It takes about 14 days with theoretical and practical, followed by an exam.

Finally the dance floor in full view. It will still need some TLC before the first dancers can twirl away.

Today most of the protective material was removed in some of the lounges which now are ready for final cleaning and putting in all the Hal material. Thus the floor of the Queens lounge was revealed which will now be the focus of attention for the polishers.  Billboard and Lincoln Centre are now completely clear and the Grand Dutch Café is nearing completion.

Housekeeping has taken over the cleaning of the shops. The cleaning ladies from the ship yard have now started on the corridors and the Shop Staff are busy with getting boxes on board.

In the show lounge, officially called The World Stage, things went differently this morning. Unlike in the past days when they tried to switch on as much as possible to see if it all worked, today they switched off as much as possible. Better said they switched off everything. It was a sort of “black-out morning”. Purpose was to check if the whole lounge was indeed black and no light was coming from anywhere to disturb the show.  Luckily most of us now have a cell phone with a flash light option and we did not come un-stuck when suddenly all the lights went out, and then out again. But I can guarantee, it was dark, pitch dark, leaning towards pitch black.

A small selection of at least 20 pallets with various greenery and flowers.

That the ship is nearing completion came with a strong hint today; the plants and flowers came on board. Holland America is famous for having more greenery on board than with any other cruise company and that fact was re-emphasized today. It made us feel at once a bit more ship-like.  Some plants have already been put in place and the rest will follow shortly. It will really bring the ship alive. I am personally  waiting to see how green the Culinary Arts Centre will be as there is a whole wall section devoted to the on board growing  of all sorts of herbs. Luckily garlic does not smell much when it grows otherwise it would be an interesting area to walk through. Or is garlic not an herb??

The Front Office Guest Desk is in its final outfitting stages.

As explained yesterday, with the pyramid example, today there was not much delivered or cleared away from other areas. Some lounges where having a heady mix of carpenters, electricians, tile setters, cleaners and other technical folk trying to do their job all at the same time.

The Back Office of the Front Office is already in full swing. The Guest Relation Manager is preparing with her team for the first voyage.

So I finish today with another picture of behind the scenes; our bakery is working! And it is churning out fresh bread and desserts for breakfast, lunch and Dinner. But our Baker was not a happy man this morning, just while his dough had risen, somebody switched off the power to the Oven. His whole team had to run and move everything upstairs to the warming cabinets in the main Galley. But he got it done on time and we had excellent rolls for lunch time.

Beautiful cakes and pastries in the Oven. This time the power remained on.

Today we are enjoying another sunny and beautiful day in the shipyard and without it being too cold. We are now moving from a period of “controlled mayhem” to a period of “controlled confusion”.  This does not mean the people do not know what they are doing, but they just have a hard time finding out when to do it. 

The fitting out of a cruise ship is similar to a pyramid model. In the beginning (the wide base) everybody can do their own thing and work progresses on multiple fronts.  Then more and more items are completed but not everything. Nowadays everything is interconnected and it all revolves around electricity, Wi-Fi and networks and when one item is not available, the other one cannot work or progress with work.  Thus the whole Sr. Management is busy with managing the 1000 and one little things; sometimes it all hinges on a misplaced key for one door and are thus busy with “putting out little fires” as they call it. A lot of people are now waiting for each other so each and every one can add the final touch to an area to make the delivery complete.

The liferafts for the crew are being installed. This had to wait until all the welding and painting was completed.

One of all these Top of the Pyramid items is the final connection of all Audio and Visual equipment. For a TV / monitor you need brackets, Cabling, a Control location, Software and finally the people who will operate it. Today all those items came together in the Queens Lounge and the big screen above the dance floor went on for the first time. Somebody had connected it to the surveillance camera for the dance floor and so you could see yourself walking around. Quite a nifty idea, seeing yourself dancing during cocktail hour.

The big screen above the Queens Lounge Dance Floor. Scaffolding is still in place as they are cleaning the lamps.

One item which is not so obvious but which is an intrinsic part of our security, are piracy gates. Ever since the troubles in Somalia started the aft mooring deck has always been considered a danger area. It is a little bit lower that the other access decks and thus the logic was for pirates to use this area to board a ship. With cruise ships this chance is remote as it is still too high above water to just jump over and the ship travels too fast to try for a skiff to come alongside and climb on board but it is still a lower deck. Thus to close the whole mooring deck area off, while at sea but also in port, we now have piracy gates. When the ship is docking and undocking they are hinged open and the rest of the time they close off the mooring deck.

Piracy Gates. On the aft mooring deck. These are made of stainless steel but not yet painted and thus easy to recognize.

We now have nearly all our crew on board, there are still new people boarding but it is down to a trickle, and training is in full swing plus the movement and collecting of Stores, Provisions, Spare Parts and Inventory. We have at least 10 trainers running around varying from USPH to Firefighting to Lifesaving and a plethora of other items. With much more to come. In between the crew goes back to storing and cleaning. Our Italian shipyard men are getting quite a kick out of seeing all the small Filipina Ladies carrying big boxes and or pushing big trolley’s, while wearing a safety helmet at the same time of course.

Nearly all the Gym Equipment has arrived and only needs securing and assembling.

All through the night the delivery of pallets and equipment has continued and then during the day time it can be put in place. Either by the Shipyard or by the ships complement. The logic which is followed here is mostly, if it needs a screw or a clamp or a nail, then the ship yard does it, if I can just be placed in place, then it is normally company stuff and the crew are doing it. And thus the regular crew is mainly in action with three things. Cleaning the various areas completed, carrying boxes from one place to another or (especially today) moving cabin. All the crew who came on board last week went into guest cabins, now the crew cabins are finished, so they can move and the Guest cabins can be prepared for the first voyage.

Not everybody is involved with loading. The catering for a 1000 crew goes on as well. Here the Sr. Butcher is supervising the preparation of the meat for tonights dinner.

For the wine lovers I can report that all the wine displays and the Wine Experience have now been completed apart from the TV monitors. They will be installed at the last minute to reduce the chance of getting damaged.

The Wine Barrels are in place from where you will be able to Tap & Mix your own blend.

Last night we were all ordered off the ship again for our second planned black out happening. This time they wanted the ship completely empty to see if all the Fire screen doors would close and then stay closed without anybody still walking through them. The Cruise Director had organized a movie in the Canteen of the shipyard which is large enough to accommodate the complete crew. Still many went to the little café outside the gate again and it almost burst out of its seams with at least two crewmembers per square foot of café floor space. I am now sure the proprietor can retire early after a few more of these Black outs. And he/she still has the Seabourn Encore, A Carnival ship and the TBA-dam coming after us, all with their required blackouts.

Thus far the crew has only been dry-sweeping. Today it was bucket day issue for Housekeeping and now the real anti dust battle starts.

Today we had a glorious day. The cold northerly wind disappeared and the sun shone making it a beautiful early spring day. All the yard people took advantage of it and moved their cutting and sawing work to the outside where they were not hampered by the dust flying around.  Although large areas of the ship are now so far advanced that there is only fine tuning work going on, but in some areas there is still work done with wall panels and the fine dust penetrates everywhere. Every time Housekeeping thinks they have things under control, they have not and the cleaning starts all over again.

This is a state of the art LED screen and can be seen under nearly every angle.

This morning was also the first time I saw the large screen in the Lido Pool area being switched on. Not much more than a lot of red but it is working. Eventually there will be Movies under the Stars screened here and as the Lido deck has two levels with dedicated seating area’s I think it will be a great success. With Gelati’s (The ice cream parlor), Dive Inn (Hamburger Bar), New York Deli and a Beverage Bar on each level it has the potential of becoming a very popular spot on board.

The Low Level Lighting Monitoring Panel on the Bridge.

What is a lot more technical and on occasion causing some loud Italian noises is the installation of the Low Level Emergency Lighting.  In case of a black out or other mayhem which will cause the regular lights to fail, the LLL will come on and clearly indicate the escapes routes to safety. Every corridor and every staircase has these strips and the sub-contractors who are busy with installing them have to work through the locations where everybody else is working. As you cannot coordinate the progress of everything all the time, there is occasionally a “discussion” going about who should be here and there first or later. As the LLL is a very important safety system it is controlled from the bridge. Not so much to switch it on, it does that by itself when the pertinent alarms go off, but to keep an eye on which sections might fail. With trolleys in the ship, water being spilled and strips being hit, there is nearly always a section under repair and then it is handy to have a screen which tells you where the fault is located.

I thought I will do a Selfie this time. This is the room dedicated to things related to Sit & be Fit. etc.etc.

Today also the installing of the Green House Spa on Deck 09 started. During the night all the torture equipment for the Gymnasium was lifted on board and now it is being fitted to the deck. Also the spa Ladies are starting to bring their treatment potions and everything else on board and that will keep them going for quite a while as it is a very large area. There are in total 16 treatment rooms for massage/ facials /body treatments  etc. and then we have all the other areas such as the Hair Dressing Salon, Sauna’s, Steam Rooms, Wellness areas, etc. etc. For the first time we will also have a dedicated Barber salon on board with a licensed Barber.

One of the serving stations in the Lido. The decoration is now being installed.

The Lido Restaurant is nearing its final outfitting stages. It is now called the Lido Market and for a good reason. There are now a large number of stations which each are specialized in serving one item. Not just Hot & Cold, but under names such as Homestead, Breadboard, Wild Harvest (salads), Etc. Etc.  I am greatly in favor of these stations as it reduces the standing in line enormously. You just go to the section that you fancy and get served straight away.

This is smoke with a Capital S.

A thing which we only see in dry dock or as now during a new-build is a Smoke Extraction Test for the Atrium. Although an Atrium is beautiful to have, from a safety point of view it is a difficult area. As it goes up three or more decks, smoke can freely travel from one deck to another. If this would happen in an emergency then there is a Smoke Extraction System which sucks away the smoke making it possible for people to still use the escape routes around it. So today at noon time, the Atrium was filled up with Stage Smoke until nothing could be seen and then the Smoke Extraction System was switched on. It worked well, after a few minutes we could see three decks down again.

And this is the same photo location after the Smoke Extraction fans did their work.

Today, another day in paradise, even if it is called Marghera and there is a very sharp and cold wind blowing from the Alps. But is dry and sunny and the shipyard motor is spinning at full speed and everybody is busy with the finishing up touches in a lot of locations. Whole sections of cabins have been delivered now and locked up. Unless they are of course filled up with material to be delivered to the cabins later.

Tulips from Amsterdam ???

Once a section of cabins has been handed over, the protected covering is removed for a little while, so the yard people can check if everything in the corridors is still in good order and do the necessary touch ups. Remove scratches and replace damaged wall paper where necessary. Where the carpet covering was removed it revealed the corridor carpet. Most appropriate we are still a Dutch company, so tulips are a nice touch.

Even the Cleaning Ladies wear helmets while on board. Safety is a high priority for the shipyard.

The shops which were already mostly finished have now all received their lighting and that means the cleaning ladies are having another go at removing stains and dust from all the glass displays. Looking at lighting it is now appearing in more and more areas.

Ceiling lights in the form of Octagonals in the Upper Level World Theatre entrance.

Ceiling Panels have been installed, nobody is walking around anymore with long ladders and thus the ceiling and other lights can be installed. Thus all the lighting in the Queens lounge is now there but also the lights in the top of the Show Lounge have been unveiled. Most of the show lounge is lit by spot lights but the entrance to the lounge has a very nice ceiling display.

This is one of the bunker stations. The brown hose delivers the water to the ship. all connections are color coded to avoid mistakes. Green is cooling water, Blue is potable water. Grey is sewage and black is oil. Finally Red is a separate connection for water pressure on the ships fire system.(Orange is a cover over a connection not in use)

We are still a building site and we still receive all the water from the shore side. Electric Power now comes from our own engine but we cannot make our own water yet. For that we need more engines on line and that will only happen when we sail. I do not know where Venice gets its water from but it is quite chalky and that makes the men from our coffee machines very unhappy. We buy most of our coffee from a special supplier in the Netherlands and they also deliver special equipment for the cooking and pouring of a perfect cup of coffee. Thus they are here on the ship to attach and test their equipment. They are not happy with pure water (distilled) as it does not bring out the right taste, they want a little bit of chalk in the water but not too much and they also do not like the chlorine we will have in the water once we sail. It does not seem easy to pour the perfect cup of coffee. I am glad I only drink Green Tea where a perfect cup is much easier to achieve.

Four big plugs can provide the whole ship with electricity from the shore side.

While we are on the subject of power from shore, in port most of our ships plug into the shore side Grid, so they can switch off the engines completely. The thought behind this is that the shore side can produce electricity cheaper and cleaner. Our ships are still as clean as possible (We burn low sulpher fuel, we have scrubbers to remove all the soot particles from the exhausts) but we still produce some exhaust. Thus connecting to the shore side makes sense. In principle it is a very simple affair. We just plug a very large electric plug into an electric socket and then the shore power is slowly synchronized with the ships main switch board and once balanced the engine is switched off. Then about an hour before departure it all goes the other way again without having a blackout or anything stopping to work.

Another batch of 40 from the 1036 crew going through the initial safety indoctrination.

The training of the crew goes on, day after day. Each crewmember gets an initial indoctrination when coming on board and a ships tour where the Training and Development Officer explains the difference between the Koningsdam and the other ships. Part of it is a small safety training just to refocus them on what the HAL routine is and most importantly what is different while in the shipyard, which is a basic but important thing, until we sail, do not call the bridge during an emergency but call the Front Desk. The bridge is still unmanned as the safety center is still being tested but the Front Office has all the relevant shore side telephone numbers including the one for the Shipyard Fire brigade and the Shipyard Ambulance.

For those who find this important, the Casino is ready for Operation.

Last night we had an “official” e.g. planned, black out from 20.00 – 22.00 hrs. Everybody was advised to leave the ship as there would absolutely no light available in the cabins. The two hour black out was meant to test the Emergency Generator and the Emergency Batteries under load. If there is enough power from there then the emergency systems can continue to work and it was tested extensively. The Emergency alarms were beeping and bleating through the whole ship without stopping until everybody was nearly going nuts. But it is an extremely important test and thus it had to be done. A lot of the crew descended upon the only café directly outside the Gate and the owner did very good business. I think he would not mind a few more blackouts.

The Grand Dutch Cafe is nearing completion. The time for Bitter balls and a Heineken is not far away.

The stocking/loading of the ship continues at a steady pace but the ware house is not getting any emptier as more and more trucks are arriving. Today we had a 40 foot container with large Audio /visual panels and monitors for the public spaces. Some of them were crated up and so large you could never have walked away with them but others where regular size TV boxes and could be prone to be picked up by “Collectors”. These sorts of things go straight on board and are locked away in completed Guest cabins where the door goes on double lock. A lock can always be by-passed of course but only with brute force. If the door would be opened with an electronic key then this entry can be verified by the Security Officer and key & owner identified.  There is a very good security system in the shipyard both with security at the entrances to the ship but also with roving fire patrols who apart from checking safe work practices – so there will be no fire- are also continuously checking if the doors to occupied cabins are completely locked. I moved cabins today and while moving my suitcase into the new cabin, I left the door ajar and 30 seconds later I had a Fire Guard poking his nose in. Into the ship there are three entrances, the forward one for HAL personnel only, and the other two for the yard people. Everything that comes OFF those two gangways is very carefully checked.  Ours is less of an issue as we live on board and thus only take things on board and not off the ship.

The whole ceiling of the Dining room is now visible and the tables are in place.

A lot of boxes which are now opened contain the furnishings for the lounges. Chairs for the Music Walk areas have arrived and also the tables and chairs for the Main Dining room. We are still waiting for chairs for the Pinnacle Grill and Explorers Lounge where there is still panel work going on. But give it one or two days and that will also be finished.

The full ceiling of the Queens lounge is now visible. Quite a feast for the eyes.

Although the Queens lounge is almost finished, scaffolding has gone up again as now the Sound and Vision guys are doing complicated things with speakers, lights and the Operators Booth. This Queens Lounge is basically a smaller version of the show lounges on the other ships with this difference that the Dance Floor is a lot bigger. This will be a great venue for the New Year’s Celebrations although it cannot hold 2500 people.

This is the Digital Workshop which is just waiting for the chairs.

Our painting friends are still making everybody’s life difficult, they are either in the way, or something is wet from paint and if not one of the two then we can smell the paint everywhere. The AC is running for the whole interior of the ship and our friends are of course also painting the grills which protect the fan room intakes. Luckily it does not go on continuously otherwise we would all eventually be walking around very happy from the thinner smell.

This is the walkway along the Culinary Arts Centre and a Lady Crew member is cleaning the Stainless Steel window frames.

We now have nearly all the crew on board and those who work in certain dedicated areas such as the Greenhouse Spa have been issued cleaning material and are starting to deep clean their own work areas. The ship is delivered dust free but there is a bit of a difference between what a ship yard considers dust free and what Holland America considers Spotless. We used to have the nickname in the 1920’s & 1930’s of being the “Spotless Fleet” and that ethic is still very much present in our today’s ship culture.  Thus I observed several cabins being open this morning and in two of them a crew member was happily sitting on the toilet and slowly removing paint splatters from the inside bathroom door. In another I saw two legs sticking out from under the bed and I thought……..that this  was taking it a bit too far in cleaning but it turned out she had lost an ear ring.

And thus shipyard life continues at a steady pace. There is still some big work being done on the upper decks such as the Centre Lido Area and the Crow’s nest but also there all the paneling is nearly in place and the fitting out is starting.  As long as it stays dry, things will go very fast.

While I am writing this, sitting in the Captains conference room, I am in the middle of a whirl of very nice Italian Ladies who are busy with cleaning the staff officers cabins while at the same time singing out loud to the background music. (Same tape as two days ago, so now we know exactly what is coming and we all can join in) This is the first day of the new work week and the number of yard people has increased again. A lot of finishing off work is carried out on the large cabins on the higher decks and the Officers cabins in the area behind the bridge.  The cabins which are finished are immediately tackled by the cleaning Ladies and then locked up for the final delivery.

The Kitchen has turned into “Box City” with all the equipment arriving.

For the ship side the storing process goes on relentlessly and the whole main galley has now been blocked by boxes, which are slowly but steadily unpacked and the crockery coming out is stacked on the shelves. Eventually it will have to be prewashed before it can be taken into use. That will be more than a full day’s work.  The Main dishwashers have not been handed over yet so it will have to wait until such time.

Carefully does it. HAL crockery is not cheap and a plate is easily dropped.

Another section nearing completion is the Culinary Operations Centre which has been greatly developed from what we were used to. On all the other ships the CAC is part of the Queens lounge or in the Movie theatre; here on the Koningsdam it now has its own dedicated area. It consists out of the Cooking Demonstration Area, an open Kitchen area where you can see the Chef really cooking and then a restaurant part where people can have dinner in the evening as well. Then there is a herb section in a sort of window display, where live herbs will be cultivated which are then used in the various cooking adventures.  The CAC is wedged in between a large wine display and the Wine Experience corner and that makes it possible to have mixed food & wine sessions.

The Culinary Arts Centre. The decoration on the walls, including the lights all have a cooking theme.

Looking out of the window I saw there was suddenly another Dutch ship in the port, the ms Heenvliet, not be constructed but to unload parts for another new build. We have now the Koningsdam and the Seabourn Encore fitting out but construction has already started on a next ship and a lot of steel sections/parts were unloaded. They were obviously constructed somewhere else and then brought by ship to the shipyard for further assembly.

A Dutch Coaster in the process of delivering to the yard. The listing is caused by the unloading of the sb. side first.

In the show lounge testing is also in full swing and yard people have been replaced by techno wizards who are sitting frowning over their laptops trying to figure out why something does not go beep when a button is pushed.  This is now the world of experts who speak in computer code instead of normal English that I can follow. But the first test movies are playing on the screen, split up onto three screen sections and it looks very impressive.  It is a total break from the traditional show stage as the guests sit in a 270o circle but I think it is going to blow their minds away. The other ships are already being outfitted with LED screens in the back of the stage but this is taking it to a completely higher level. It definitely has the WOW factor.

This photo does not give the right impact of the what is on the screen. Showing Whitney Houston.

What does not have the wow factor are our painting friends who have now descended upon the crew staircases and are painting the railings while traffic continues to go by. We have all been trained to always hold on to the railing while going up and down the stairs (One hand for the ship, One hand for yourself, as the saying goes) but today we learned very fast not to do this until there are no pots of paint insight anymore.

Apart from storing the ship, the crew is starting to be immersed in their safety trainings. We have a number of safety trainers on board who are a consultancy for Holland America and they will take care of the in-depth training of the specific crew members who will have to operate the assigned safety equipment.  We will see a lot of lifeboats going up and down in the coming days.  I am still working on the search plans for the ship as it has to fit in with the structural difference of this ship and the different mustering system. By now I know every locker and space by heart and how to get there the first way, now the challenge starts to find out who will be in charge of each and every locker on board.

The dry weather is still holding but it is chilly in Venice. Which is not a bad thing as with all the testing the A.C. is working but not always blowing cold air.

Today we had a reduced work force on board the ship again but it did not mean a reduction in noise as the General Alarm Testers were having a go at it. Today they lacked an English Announcer and we had to do with the pre-warning being in Italian but if an announcement is followed by the piercing 7 short beeps and 1 long one, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out what it is all about. Hence today a larger number of crew could be observed walking around with ear plugs in.

Housekeeping in full swing with handing out boxes full of uniforms to a long line of crew standing just outside the door. The Uniform store is about triple the size of the tailor work area you see here.

A new contingent of crew arrived again today and apart from the compulsory safety indoctrination their first activity was to go to the Tailor Shop to get uniforms and (safety) shoes. This area is located deep in the dungeons of the ship on the lowest deck: C deck fwd. It is located there as the Main Ships Laundry is next door and also the very large linen and uniform stores.  In the past days the tailor shop has been stocked up with all the boxes from the warehouse. Some of these boxes, such as all the shoes, come directly from the manufacturer but most uniforms have been made on board the other ships and have been sent over to the Koningsdam warehouse. Every ship was asked to help out with making some sort of uniform and when I was recently on the Nieuw Amsterdam their part in the supply chain was making the black uniforms in use. These are made in three standards sizes: S.M.L. and then adapted to the exact size of the future wearer when handed out.

Laundry Master and troops putting the laundry machines through their first paces.

Another part of the operation which is now being started up is the Main Laundry. We are living on board now and thus we have towels, linen and bathmats which are changed in the same cycle as if the ship was already in operation. It is still only the crew living on board hence some of the laundry crew is still helping out with other chores in the ship.  In the coming days the work will increase here when the full crew is on board, and then a lot of cleaning material will come down as soon the major cleanup starts before the first guests are arriving on April 4^th. Holland America tries to use as much fabric cleaning towellets as possible instead of throw away material. Washing with water made on board from the waste heat of the engines is more environmental friendly than using boxes and boxes of –one-time-use-only.

Shorex Service Desks in the Lower Atrium on Deck 1 – Main Deck. The mural on the back wall has a nautical theme, which is continued on various panels in the hallways.

In the ship the sub – contractors are still working and some areas are receiving the finishing touches. One such an area is the Shorex –excursion desk on Deck 1- Main deck in the Atrium. It has been setup in quite a clever way as it can double up as a check – in counter, incase this has to happen on board and not in the terminal. On this deck is located the main entrance door to the ship. It is also in the open Atrium and you can look up to the Front Office itself which is located two decks higher on deck 3 – Promenade Deck.

Service with a smile. This is the first time in my life to see cooks working with hard hats on.

In the meantime with almost a 1000 crew on board or due on short notice, the catering also is taking on a more elaborate meaning. Officer’s Mess, Petty Officers Mess and Crew Mess are full to capacity during breakfast, lunch and dinner hours and the Culinary Operations Dept. is trying to make something special out of it. Warm meals are cooked A la Carte and the cold parts are on the buffets. Looking at the operation, the cooks are really enjoying this as they can be as creative as they want to be. The normal menu cycle is not in place yet and so they can cook. We often forget that the life of a supervising chef is nowadays more paperwork, food & cost control and ordering, than really doing the cooking.

As it is Sunday, the Cruise Director has organized a soccer field for those who want to play a game and there is a Coach going to the local shopping centre for those who forgot to pack their toothpaste. There are no shops in the close proximity of the ship so this is a great service.

Tomorrow the ship will be full again with shipyard people who had the weekend off and the fitting out will continue at full speed. I think that by the end of the coming week most public rooms will be ready, although they will only be officially delivered during the last week of March.

The weekend started today and the shipyard went a little bit quieter.  But it being so close to delivery means a lot of work still goes on, especially by the sub-contractors. Those are company hired by the shipyard on behalf of Holland America who do the specialist installation work. Quite a few of them also live on board and they will prefer to continue working anyway. If they finish ahead of schedule then they will not delay the ships operation and they can go home earlier as well. On the outside deck the painters are taking  advantage of the sunny weather to continue painting.  They have been told to paint, so they paint, much to the frustration of the supervising deck officers who only like those areas to be painted that are supposed to be painted. Sometimes there is a “conflict of interest” and then the supervisor has to be located and after a bit of high drama the work goes on as it is supposed to be done.

The outside white starts to sparkle more and more with the constant painting going on.

Saturday is also the day the shipyard removes equipment no longer needed. This is mostly electricity cables and portable sub stations which all the workers use for their tools.  Nobody in the shipyard uses the power sockets in the ship as A: the plugs often do not fit as half our ship is on 110Volts. B: you never know if the power remains on with all the testing going on, C: somebody will get very upset if you connect a tool which is too heavy and then short circuit a junction box or worse.  When the building starts there is no electricity on board at all of course, only steel bulkheads, and then the whole ship gets power from the outside by means of heavy cables leading to portable sub stations (a sort of multiple junction boxes) all over the ship. A sort of temporary power grid. These sub stations remain in use until an area is completed.  With the nice dry weather today the yard had erected a special off-loading platform in one of the provision access doors to make it all a bit easier.

Our crew will be kept busy as this is our warehouse and everything you see will go on board in the coming days.

The Koningsdam is different to the rest of the fleet in many areas but there is one area where it is completely different. This is the first Holland America ship which is built with the – return safe to home – principle. This means if one engine room burns out with all the controlling equipment, the other one should be able to bring the ship home. If the navigation bridge becomes unusable then there is a second (more basic) navigation bridge on the top deck which makes it possible for the Captain to still sail the ship. This sort of two ships into one ship necessitated a lot of changes to the ships construction. Cooling systems, Electrical systems, basically everything is separate so can be fully split up in case of an emergency.

A nice touch in the Bill board area. A lamp in the form of a Trombone. Visible for a day and then wrapped up again until delivery day.

In recent time there have been a few ships which due to an engine fire were completely without facilities for a few days.  And a few thousand people without flushing toilets and A.C. is not pleasant. Thus the new systems now ensure that basic services will always be available. With the other ships there is retro fitting going on to make this also possible, at least to a certain extent, but the Koningsdam is the first HAL ship with the full concept.

These are a few of the several hundred boxes with crockery which are now unpacked and put to use.

It is now the plan for the complete crew to fully live and work on board, after the 17^th of March and this means the Hotel Department is ratching up the output of food and cabin services. By that last date all the offices should be finished so all the departments will be on board instead of in the yard offices. At the same time the crew training is in full swing. There is a second Hotel director on board who coordinates all the training to get over a 1000 crew ready for work. Safety first of course but then also all the work routines have to be rehearsed.

The Function Rooms on Main Deck have been completed. There are 3 but two of them can be split up.

Today the rest of the Entertainment Department joined the ship and now also the tests and rehearsals in the show lounge have started. Most of this takes place late in the evening when things are a bit quieter and not all the yard people “volunteer to become an impromptu audience”. The Cruise Director is now giving a daily announcement with what is going in. A most important fact, on Monday the self-service laundries for the crew will become operational. Good thing; as I am running out of clean socks etc.

Today all the ceiling lights in the main dining room were clearly visible.

Tomorrow is another quiet day and according to one yard supervisor a lot of extra protection will be installed in the delivered area’s and stay there until the final delivery of each area and the eventual handover of the ship.

The dry weather is holding and thus the yard is in full swing with what has to be painted or has to repainted. We normally wear hard hats in the shipyard to avoid being hit by “foreign objects descending from a greater height” but today the hat is handy to catch paint drips.  We also had our first introductory training in operating the lifeboat davits and lowering a lifeboat. As the technique keeps developing our lifeboat systems change with each class of ship we build and thus we have to be re-trained as well.

Not much Officer glamour & spivvy uniforms to see but here we have the deck officers gathered for Lifeboat Instruction.

Apart from painting outside, there is painting going on inside as well, with a lot of touch up in progress. Most of the inside of the ship was spray painted when the ship was only a steel hull and without most of the machinery installed. With those machines being installed and with over 2000 yard people milling around it is not all as pristine as it was in the beginning.  Thus suddenly corridors are blocked with plastic and a message in Italian exhorting everybody not to go through. Occasionally one of the shipyard firemen realizes this too late and his/her once fine red helmet has suddenly taken on another color. Another good reason to wear a helmet. First stick the helmet through a door before anything else.

This is the Grand Staircase between the Ocean Bar and the Casino.

More and more protective covering is disappearing and rooms are ready for the final installation of equipment and furniture. Today the Casino, Photo gallery, Ocean Bar and Queens Lounge took another big jump.  The Ocean Bar is getting its furniture installed and the photo shop is nearly finished. It is only missing all the paraphernalia the photographers install themselves. On this ship they have a dedicated Black Label studio an improvement on the “tents” on the older ships where it was a retro fit. The B & W studio remains the most popular part of all photography on board and hence a dedicated studio.

The Photo Gallery. Only the protective covering still needs to be removed.

For most of the public rooms it is now waiting for the final furnishings to arrive. Most of it is already in the shipyard but will only be brought on board once it is safe to install. And as most of this installing is plug_and_play, it will not take much time.

The Koningsdam is the first HAL ship with a bridge – cockpit – design. 2 Navigators in the front and Captain and Staff Captain on the 2nd row. The chair to right is for a pilot, if needed.

The bridge is now being completed as well. It has been operational since the Trial trips in January but then most of the safety systems for the ship were jerry rigged. Now the official panels and monitors are being installed. This is done by an Italian company called Martec who are now trying to get their software to speak to the various hardware in the ship. Last night they were testing the closing of the Fire screen Doors from the bridge and although announcements were made, it caught the occasional Italian un-aware and the person in question let the whole wide world very loudly know that he was not amused. Learned another few words which were not in my Italian Dictionary. With the complexity of the safety systems increasing there is now a complete separate Safety Centre behind the bridge. E.G. completely separated from the Navigation Bridge. In case the Captain needs to overview an emergency and oversee navigation at the same time, he will have to stand with one foot in the safety center and one in the wheelhouse. But it is better that way as it will not disturb the concentration of the navigators.

Most of the art still has to be installed but the flatter art work has already been put on the bulkheads in the corridors. The Koningsdam has a musical theme and some of the decks are named after famous composers. We have Beethoven, Gershwin, Mozart and Schubert and the corridor art reflects this. On navigation deck the art is related (surprise) to navigation and the captain will eventually see a man high Lighthouse painting when he walks from his cabin into the Guest staircase.  I do not know who pulls the protective covering off and I also do not know who puts it back on but when walking around you get different glimpses everyday  of what is mostly still hidden behind carton and wall paper.

What is also Art: but on a Grand Scale is the company’s logo on the funnel. The Koningsdam is the first ship that has switched from the old to the new.

Tomorrow is supposed to be another dry day, so the painting will mostly continue full speed as well. I had better keep my helmet on for another few days.

Thus today the migration took place of all the officers and crew who were scattered throughout Mestre (the town next to the shipyard in Marghera) to the ship. We were blessed to today with sunny but chilly weather, in other words a perfect day to move suitcases up and down gangways and stairs. The lifts are working but they are constantly full of all sorts of shipyard people and thus it is much easier to go 4 decks up the stairs. We are all scattered over the ship; some are on A deck and some like me are on deck 4. We have been put everywhere where cabins are already completed and accepted. At least that is the objective as one of the crew came back with the magic words “cabin still under construction”.  But there are plenty of cabins so he got another number and there he went again.  This time the bed had been installed and he was in business.

Crew starts to help out with cleaning up. It releases shipyard people for other areas. This is the Ocean Bar area.

The whole boarding process is organized by the ships officers. We already have the purser in the yard and the crew officer and the GRM, the three most important people to set new boarding crew safely on their way.  The plan is to have between a 100 and 140 crew joining every day and if this works out then we should be up to speed by Sunday. That will then give us about three weeks to get everybody molded into a smooth operating team.  As mentioned before, the most experienced crew is being transferred from the various ships and thus the actual work will just be a matter of finding the right routine. More work will be needed in the safety training of the crew as the Koningsdam has a different mustering system and everybody will have to get used to that.

Vegetable Cold Room. For the time being one corner will suffice for serving the crew.

In the meantime a lot of finishing touches are being made on the lower decks. The cleaning ladies and the painters have moved in and miles and miles of temporary cabling is being removed. With 2500 guests and over a 1000 crew coming storing is in full swing but it will take a while before the store rooms are filled. One 40 foot container full of provisions does not make much of an impression. Some is done by the yard but more and more crew is being assigned to help speed things up. Ever thought about how much time it takes to get over 3000 matrasses on board? They are all the special Sealy matrasses that HAL uses and it takes sometimes more than 2 people to handle one of those things. They sleep heavenly but they are heavy to handle.

Store room Alleyway. It almost looks like a ship already as most shipyard material has been removed.

The ship is running on its own power and light, electricity, hot and cold water as everything is now produced on board.  I have been parked in an outside cabin (with balcony) and everything is working perfectly. Currently they have started with tuning in the televisions and as these are fully interactive they all have to be programmed / software uploaded one by one.  The A/V boys will not be lacking work in the coming days.  A nice touch is that we have usb ports on the sides of the bed so you can charge your cellphone while using it as your alarm clock during the night.  The vanity desk has 5 electric plugs, 2 European, 3 American and another usb port which should be able to take care of all connectivity needs. One task each crewmember has been given is to completely check each cabin and push each button to see if everything work. For this they have a form to be handed in as soon as all checks are complete. Everything in my cabin works; it just needs more dust removal / cleaning. That will be done by our own cabins stewards once they can get at all the cabins.

Painting the piping is always the final touch when work has finished. This area in the Engine Room we call the Pipe Tunnel (for good reason) and connects  the Fwd part of the ER with the Aft part by leading in between the Potable Water Tanks.

What is an annoying part of a new building is the constant alarm testing. Each cabin, each speaker, each smoke detector, etc.etc. has to be tested individually before a certificate of completion can be issued. As a result we are now listening to a constant cycle of 7 short and 1 long beep on the alarm system with in between (coffee and lunch time) Ramazotti (Italian pop singer) and Michael Jackson (who seems to be world famous here in the shipyard as I have not heard anything else in English yet) Luckily the Captain has decreed that by 7 pm. it should stop so people can go to bed on time as the yard is getting back in action every morning around 05.00 hrs.

A constant flow of Matrasses, until over 3000 will have been brought on board.

The weather is supposed to hold over the coming days which will be good for the boarding crew. By the weekend we should be in full swing. More and more crew coming on board, and less and less yard people on board when the various projects are completed one by one.