Last night after I finished my daily blog we had a little Dutch gathering to celebrate “Sinterklaas”. It is a feast from where Santa Claus originally came from. What is now standard for Christmas in North America was once imported in the 17^th century from the Low Lands in Europe. It started in the ancient days when Nicolas of Smyrna (located in nowadays Turkey) became the patron saint of the sailors. There is a large St.Nicolaas church in Amsterdam which still recalls those days.  The same patron saint was also taken over by the Spanish and thus for most of the sailing community St.Nicolaas was somehow located in Spain.  Slowly but steadily this whole thing became a Children’s thing and involved getting presents. This tradition is still a very big thing in Holland, where on 21 November St. Nicolaas or Sinterklaas arrives by steamship from Spain. It is broadcast live on Dutch Television and the biggest presenters vie to narrate and present it. From the 21^st. onwards the children are supposed to put their shoe next to the fire (or the Central Heating as this seem to work as well) with a little gift for the horse of St.Nicolaas. He rides a horse over the roofs and then comes down the chimney (or through the Central Heating pipe) to visit each house each night until December 5^th.

How more dutch can you go? Sinterklaas on a drawbridge with a windmill in the background. This was arrival in the town of Leiden.

The next morning there is then a small gift in return for the shoe owner; and the carrot or bit of hay are gone.  Slowly this builds up for the child until December 5^th. which is the day before St.Nicolaas his official birthday. But as he is a holy man he does not expects gifts, he hands them out. On the 5^th. there might be a chance that St.Nicolaas will visit your house.  If so, then it is a day of reckoning because if you have been bad you go in the bag and Black Peter, the Saints assistant, will take you back to Spain. If you have been good then there will be presents.  All around this core happening, there are songs, special cookies and chocolate.  The shop keepers normally have a grand time as the result of it.

Big steamships are hard to find. Towns with canals normally have a restored steam tug or similar available. Here is the bow full of assistants called Black Peters.

The next day it is all over and the Saint disappears back to Spain. As far as we are concerned he then changes uniform, flies to the North Pole (at least for the North Americans, according to the Dutch he lives in Lapland) and remorfs into Santa Claus.  Then the shopkeepers have a 2^nd bonanza as they try to convince the Dutch to give presents again for Christmas. For that purpose they have a legion of willing ambassadors; basically everybody under the age of 15 is firmly in favor of getting presents twice and as a result we have in Holland a sort of double shopping whammy.

For the grown-ups it is more of a party and the ones I like are the ones where we draw a name. Then we have to make a poem about something that happened in the previous year to the person’s whose name we drew, and buy a present which relates to the contents of the poem (Cost of the present is normally limited to about 5 dollars.) and then we have a hilarious evening when the “victims” recite their own mishaps and light embarrassments.

Here on the ship it was more of an impromptu affair with one crewmember dressed up as Sinterklaas and one as Black Peter and a group of Dutch speaking officers for a bit of laughter and fun. I did not stay that long as I cannot stand loud music but my class  enjoyed it and that is what it is all about.

Today we have a rainy day in Ft. Lauderdale. A very rainy and very windy day and one has to hope that it will get better when we go south. We had the K-9 dogs on the pier today, to sniff all the provisions and even they looked miserable. This is not the Florida that we see on postcards.

The good ship Westerdam will sail the same route again, Grand Turk, San Juan, Charlotte Amalie and Half Moon Cay. It is also the last week for the school class. Next time Ft. Lauderdale they will go home or they will join their first ship. One has already an assignment for the Amsterdam and the 2^nd one might stay on the Westerdam. We will see. Exciting days for the team.

For a moment it looked like as if we might have had an exciting morning or no morning at all as it was blowing over 25 knots when the Westerdam approached the anchorage. Luckily it turned out to be a last minute squall and once the ship had settled at the anchorage the wind dropped and we observed a normal weather pattern.  Although Half Moon Cay is a wonderful place to call at it remains fully exposed to the vagaries of the weather and a ship at anchor can only take so much before it has to abort the call.

Holland America investigated in the past the option to build a dock here. In the same way as Disney has a dock at their private island. The challenge in our case was the steepness of the rise of the island out of the deep. There is hardly a 1000 ft. of distance between the beach and the plunge into the abyss. Most of the time the bow of the ship is 30 to 40 feet  above the sea floor but the stern being 800 ft. towards open sea is already above a 1000 ft. of water. To get a dock in it meant digging into the land to get the docking area so far towards the land that it would be possible to find a foundation for the dock pilings which had to hold the stern.

HMC. Just before the opening of the first season. The dredger is still in attendance.

Everything is possible but it would have meant an enormous upheaval to the island and not very good for conserving the nature of the area.  Thus it was deemed better to be at anchor and accept the occasional chance of ships having to cancel the call. The artificial harbor which was created instead could be located in a corner of an out cropping which was basically waste land as it did not affect the ocean floor or the flora or the fauna.  Then slowly but steadily HMC was developed ensuring that all the buildings were and are kept on a narrow strip between the beach and the Nature Reserve around the lake further inside the island.

Because we can control what goes to the island we can also control what comes off the island. Thus everything that we bring ashore for supplies is either used or comes back again. The island is left as it is and was. Clean and pollution free. The only thing which does not come back are the bales of hay and straw for the horses. The ships load these on a regular basis in Fort Lauderdale and after an overnight run to HMC are then landed ashore.  Horses are great recyclers and we do not have to take anything back.

The one item we cannot deliver is the minimal amount of fuel supplies which the island needs. Mainly for the generator and for the few people who live here permanently. These are gas and oil deliveries which the cruise ships are not allowed to take on board and carry. For that purpose a little local tanker pops up on occasion, makes a sort of beach landing and pumps the required amount of fuel into the holding tanks.

Although Holland America is the owner of the island (or better said the enduring lessee) it does not have jurisdiction to keep everybody off the island. And thus we had a visitor today, a small sailing yacht which arrived just before we did; crossing over from the Eleuthera Island side more to the West.  I suppose we would have more sailing yachts coming in if the island wasn’t in such a remote spot far away from anything which attracts a lot of six pack sailors, or gin palaces coming in and dropping the hook in order to show each other their latest Rolex.

By 14.30 I had the whole team forward for raising the anchor, with my main duty being to keep the sailors who make up the regular anchor party away from trying to take over from the Ladies. They tried the other day and today they tried again.  But as the Ladies get equal pay, they will also do equal work and the sailors were told to go back and sit on the bench. In the end they starting messing around with the fresh water hose in order to do at least something. Next cruise when the team is on stations again in the morning I will ask the Staff Captain to let the sailors sleep in. I am very sure that that will make them happy.

Tomorrow we are back in our home port Fort Lauderdale. We will not be docking at our regular dock nbr. 26 but at Pier 21. We have a number of mega ships in and thus the Harbor Master has reshuffled the berths a little bit. Expected are tomorrow: Oasis of the Seas, Independence of the Seas, Island Princess, Celebrity Infinity and us the Westerdam. Weather: a big chance of showers and temperatures round 79oF or 26oC.

The weather on the North Atlantic looked threatening for a moment, at least on the weather forecast yesterday but it all fell apart and today we have a nice smooth ride towards Half Moon Cay. It is windy out here but it is coming from the stern and as the ship is going full speed, the relative wind has been reduced to just a gentle breeze.

Something which is seldom highlighted in the world is that the cruise industry is a very safe industry. In a similar way as the airline industry. Although the whole world takes notice when an airplane crashes or there is a mishap with a cruise ship, but in percentages it is much safer to make a cruise than to cross the road in an average city.  That safety comes from the quality of the people on board but also the self-controls each respected company imposes upon itself.

Parts of those self-controls have to do with safe working while on board. We want each crew member to come out with 10 fingers and go home again with 10 fingers as well. And there is plenty of opportunity for it not to happen, as apart from the normal dangers you would have ashore, there is also the extra danger in the fact that our work place moves. The deck is always in movement (even if it is only a tiny bit) unless we are docked in port.

To achieve this Holland America has put in place a whole string of precautions and requirements to which everybody has to adhere to before any work takes place. If a job has to be done, then there is first a Risk Assessment process which identifies how it has to be done, what could go wrong and what is needed to avoid it from going wrong. Either the work itself or the consequences for the person carrying out the work, or the people in the vicinity. And as we are a cruise ship there are always plenty of people around and quite often in locations where they should not be.

The next thing is to explain to the crew member and if needed give training about how the job needs to be done.  Then there is the equipment and finally the securing of the area so the job can be carried out in a safe way for everybody.  This can be a lot of work but it needs to be done and it works.

The challenge lies in carrying out jobs which are repeating itself as there is the chance, almost the certainty, for complacency to creep in.  The human mind is forgetful and if nothing went wrong during the last 50 times then nothing will go wrong the 51^st. time and thus a little deviation from the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) will not do any harm. But it does. To mitigate against this danger we have these SOP’s so we can train and drill fleet wide to the same standards.

Our biggest challenge lies in the fact that most of our crew come from countries where the safety standards are ……..let’s say flexible. Then they enter our culture and suddenly they are involved in a lot of fussing about something nobody at home would even think about. They learn of course and the apply the knowledge and the routines but we sometimes see that after a vacation a lot of that carefully cultivated safety culture has slipped away again. And thus we start anew.

To keep the routine ingrained and the focus sharp we have two standard routines. It is the 15 minute trainer whereby short (less than 15 minute long) instructions/trainings are given to a target group and we have tool box discussions which takes place before a job is carried out.  Safety at work is by far the most important thing we have on board as it touches every routine we carry out. I consider it so important that each of my students has to do a 15 minute Train the Trainer in rotation in front of the class and explain one element of all the safety issues out there. It helps with public speaking, it helps with understanding the equipment and it ingrains from the start that safe work starts with thinking about it.

Tomorrow we are in Half Moon Cay. We are supposed to have nice weather with a gentle breeze and we are the only ship.  Last week the weather was not that good but I think tomorrow I will send the class to the beach to observe the ship from the island side for a while.

Because the nights are getting longer we arrived in the dark at the Westside of St Thomas although pilot time had been set for 06.00 hrs. Only a few weeks ago we arrived at the same time and it was still full daylight. Now we only managed to dock during daylight as the sun slowly rose above the horizon just before 07.00 hrs. Departure in the dark is not much of an issue but arrival is preferred during day light. Not especially for the navigation but for the docking procedures. It is simply easier to see where the lines are going, if the linesmen ashore have caught the heaving line and if the mooring rope is sitting nicely on the bollard. Although the docks are normally floodlit during the night, the lamps are not always specifically aimed at the edge of the pier, berth or dock, where our interest lays. Quite often the design is to spread light over the dock area and not necessary over the rim of the dock where we have the bollards and the fenders. Thus we prefer day light.

The whole team was present this morning at 06.00 hrs. to observe the Bo ‘sun and Sailors in action during the docking procedure and this evening  my five students will let go all the lines by themselves and operates the winches etc. It is the next step in becoming proficient on the mooring deck. My task will be to ensure it all happens safely but also to keep the sailors away from helping. I have two female officers among the five and somehow the sailors find it difficult to let the two handle the ropes and do real sailors work.

The lifeboat docked at the tender platform and the Diningroom Manager (lifeboat commander) is starting the embarkation process.

We had another interesting item today, something the guest seldom sees.  All guests who stay on board in port during a drill will have come across our training drills. Either by announcement or by being removed from the deck area where the drill is taking place. Something the guests do not see is the lifeboat loading exercise. Filling the boat up with a full complement; as we do this while the lifeboat is in the water.  Our winches are made to lower a lifeboat with 150 people on board into the water but they are not made to hoist 150 people back up again. Thus we park the lifeboat somewhere and march 150 crew into the lifeboat and train the commanders in getting everybody seated in such a way that the 150 really fit in. this exercise was an initiative from the cruise industry itself under management from the CLIA. (Cruise Lines International Association).

“Are you all having a good time ?”. The Training Officer giving some extra instruction.

It is a valuable exercise for the lifeboat commanders as this would not be easy to do in a real emergency. The lifeboat could be filled to capacity if all beds on board would have been sold (which is seldom the case) and then everybody has to sit exactly in the assigned spot, for the loading of the full complement to work. Normally a lot of our upper /bunk beds are not sold and this would provide some extra leg room in the boats. But we could have a full house and to ensure we park all 150 occupants in the boat, there are 150 black spots marked in the lifeboat so everybody has a little place to sit.

Maritime law, SOLAS, requires a lifeboat to be in the water, fully loaded, in 30 minutes. The clock starts ticking the moment the Abandon Ship alarm is given and it stops ticking the moment the lifeboat sails away from the blocks. That does not give us  much time and thus a good training here is of the essence. Today we did it in 20 minutes but that was including getting some stragglers and prima donna’s in who really did not want to sit in a warm lifeboat. Not counting those it would have been 15 minutes and that is a good time. Leaving 15 minutes for getting everything in motion including swinging out of the boats. Lowering only takes 30 seconds and this final action has little impact on the total time.

Tomorrow is a sea day and it might be a wobbly one. A windy system is coming towards the area, or at least close to us, and it might result in a similar day at sea as we had last cruise. But it all depends how the system develops overnight and where it moves to.

Sailing down to San Juan from Grand Turk Island is one straight course once you have cleared the Turks and Caicos Islands.  You keep this course until 3 miles north of the entrance and then turn to 181o which are the leading lights. The most important happening is, whether the pilot will join in open sea or will join in the lee of Morro Castle. The San Juan pilot boat is seaworthy but not made for boisterous seas, nor do the pilots have any inclination to get sea sick. We like it that way as it is much safer to board the pilot inside as you can main your preferred approach speed of 12 – 14 knots without having to slow down for the pilot and then speed up again once he/she is on board.

What makes me write this?  Well my team was this morning on the bridge to observe arrival. Captain Rens van Eerten had set them a challenge. The one who writes the best approach – voyage- plan, will have that plan approved and adopted and next cruise it will be used to sail into the port. The winner will give the orders and with the captain as an approving filter between the winner and the executing bridge team these orders will then be carried out. Heady stuff when you are just starting out.

This morning we went through the whole arrival sequence and I pointed out where I would ask the nasty questions a captain would ask to test your knowledge.  Most items they had already under control, the rest was noted down for further incorporation.

As mentioned in one of my previous blogs, San Juan has officially 4 docks. Numbered from West to East. Number 1 takes the small cruise ships, Number 2 has been gone a long time and is now only a small ferry pier, Number 3 takes the mega liners such as the Oasis o/t Seas and dock 4 takes anything which fits alongside.  The Westerdam docks standard at 4 West and with our length of 960 feet we fit in with still a little bit of room to spare.

While coming in, I was thinking about when I came here in the 80’s and 90’s with the N ships. They always docked at Pier 1, preferably at the East Side, so we could let the wind blow us against the dock. The N ships had very weak thrusters and going against the Trade Wind blowing straight over the pier did simply not work. If I had to dock at the west side then I would wait until the ship for the east side had arrived so I could come in using that ship as a wind breaker.

The N.A (III) docked at the old Pier 3 East side. A Carnival ship is docked at 1 West.

The amazing thing which crossed my mind was that all the HAL ships from those days still sail, except for the ss Rotterdam (V) which is now a museum ship, but the rest Noordam, Nieuw Amsterdam and Westerdam eventually all ended up with Thomson Cruises. This is an English holiday company although it is part of the German operator TUI which is part again of Royal Caribbean. Thomson is what we call in England a “package holiday” company providing a lot of all-inclusive vacations both ashore and on the ships. Quite often wine and beer are included as well. (Except premium spirits of course) In the States they would call the product “mass market” such as Carnival Cruise Lines. I call it “Bob the Builder” cruises. Not meant in a negative way but marketed towards hard working people who go on a cruise and want to enjoy themselves without any fuss. And they are very successful so our old Hal ships keep going.

The Thomson Spirit ex N.A. III. Seen here docked in Mahon, Menorca. Not much changed except for the hull color.

The team spent the afternoon exercising with the lifeboat. Today it was bringing the lifeboat back under the fall blocks again for pick up, so they know how to do it, and tomorrow they have to talk the lifeboat back while sitting next to another driver. Something they will have to do in real life as well as it is the only way of training new lifeboat commanders. Communicating is not easy and the results are sometimes quite funny. I once ended up on the other side of the harbor when we did the first run. The trainee “instructor” was sitting with their back towards the bow, facing the driver and got port and starboard mixed up all the time.

We sail tonight at 23.00 for Charlotte Amalie, Crown Bay, St. Thomas. We will be docked by 07.00 hrs. ready to send 1900 eager shoppers ashore to empty out their wallets. The weather looks reasonable, chance of showers and a warm day with 83oF and 29oC. It might be the case in the days after as well.

So with the road getting smoother and smoother the good ship Westerdam made its way to Grand Turk Island and was docked by 08.00 hrs. . We shared the berth with the Carnival Sunshine which was originally built as the Carnival Destiny and the first 100,000+ ship for Carnival.  She is easily recognizable as she has an enormous water slide behind the funnel. I do not know if the other Carnival ships have them the same size but somehow with this ship it is really an outstanding feature. I wonder how it works with a rolling ship. You cannot fall out as the slides are tubes but it must be a completely different sensation than being ashore in a fun park.

On board we created our own fun today as we held the mass casualty drill. I always offer the option to organize one as it takes so much time for the ship to do it and the Westerdam put it at once on the safety schedule. And thus the race was on to evacuate and save 35 casualties from a collision and the resulting fire. The 35 were all volunteers from among the crew and they put on a very nice performance. Everybody likes to be a drama queen once in a while. The main challenge of such a drill is always the coordination of the transport. We have man power, we have equipment, and we have the leadership but those three things need to be coordinated to get the casualties to the right location.

The Red triage area. (Normally called the Queens lounge and which just happens to be red) Medical is overseeing the stretcher teams bringing in the wounded.

For that purpose various public rooms are assigned; Red room for survival possible, Black room for beyond hope, Green room for walking wounded, Yellow room for those who should be seen after the Red room cases. The medical team (and we only have 5) can then rotate from room to room and sort them all out. Sometimes we have (still practicing) medical professionals among the guests on board and then the Captain can decide to make an announcement to enlist their help.  But for drill purposes, our focus is on the organization of making 2 + 2 = 6.  Or better said: help to increase the output of those 5 ships medics.  All that kept us happily occupied up to just before lunch time.  In a few days we will have a debriefing and in the mean time I will spend some time collating all the observations to create a debriefing to learn and improve. Luckily I had my 5 “spies” available and they were everywhere to photograph, make little movies and observe. Next time they will be on the other side of the fence.

Our Lady 3rd officer applying a “stopper rope” to the mooring rope. Once there is slack in the rope the other officer will wrap it around the bollard.

At 13.00 hrs. class continued for them and we are focusing on items they do not learn much about at school. They learn about mooring ropes and winches and docking etc. but they do not learn about keeping oversight and having a good situational awareness of what goes on when four winches are going at the same time and 8 sailors are jumping around with the ropes.  So we watch and observe at departure and I ask nasty questions. A little practical item which I teach them is how to put a rope on a ships bollard and not to keep it on the capstan.  With our mooring deck configuration it is sometimes not so easy to do and the sailors are very quick in saying “no can do chiep”.  What can you do then if you are just starting out as a brand new third officer?  Only one thing, do it yourself. Show it and then there is no argument from anybody.

The weather turned out very nice today and approx. 5000 guests, coming from the two ships, enjoyed the resort and the greater island. When the ship docks on the North side of the pier, its bow is almost onto the beach and it gives the navigators a very close up look of what goes on below. Sometimes we complain as captains that the navigators look too much in the radar and not enough through the windows to the outside; today this was absolutely not the case. A “good lookout” was kept at all times.

By 15.00 hrs. the ship had sailed again heading full speed for our next port of call San Juan. Here we will make our approach at 10.30 am to be docked by noon time; for a long stay until 23.00 hrs.  The weather looks like regular Puerto Rican weather. Partly Cloudy with a chance of showers and temperatures of 89oF or 25oC.  I hope it will work out as I want to go down with a lifeboat to train practical boat handling.

In the early morning we sailed through the southern tip of a left over wave field which caused the ship to move about somewhat, but by 10 am we saw the waves go down and the ship settle down as well. Now we are back to the regular “motion of the ocean” which is always here even when it is or has been perfect weather for a few days.

As we are now sailing above the Bahama’s and calling at ports in the area I wondered just how long Holland America has been visiting this area. Grand Turk where we are tomorrow has only been on the cruise map since we have a dock there. Before we had a few attempts to go at anchor and tender but the percentages of cancelling were very high and we all gave up until the Pier was constructed. Half Moon Cay has now been with us since before 2000 and also before that time we did not go there as we ourselves had to build the location first.

Closer to Florida we have Freeport and this port has been on the map for a longer period. As a cruise ship destination it gained real prominence as an alternative for Nassau.  In the good old days when the ships were small and it was not a real mass market yet, the docks in Nassau could handle most of the time 10 ships. In the mid eighties this started to change and slowly the ships got longer and the Pier that before could handle two ships, could now only accommodate one ship. Much of this was caused by Carnival when they introduced the Ecstasy Class.  With the arrival of this class the company greatly expanded and filled double berths. At the same time for the large number of 3 and 4 day cruises Nassau was not enough anymore and the eye was cast to the other side of North West Providence Channel where there were docks as well at Freeport.

It started out with a very ramshackle dock just inside the entrance and I remember going there with the Westerdam (II) and thinking: “if the wind picks up and blows against the ship, the ropes will pull all the bollards out of the dock, it was sometimes very marginal”. The 2^nd thing I remember were the very loud and obnoxious cab drivers who tried to pressure the guests into their taxi’s as it was the only way to go to town. It gave ship’s management the headache of choosing to either advise the guests to stay on board and then get the complaint “why are you going there”, or advising them to go ashore and then get the complaint “why don’t you do something about these guys”. But things have improved greatly. There are now nice docks and transport has been sorted out and the Cab drivers now provide a professional experience. Freeport turned from a back water port for laid up ships (Our Rotterdam V was laid up there from 2001 to 2011) to a prominent port with a large container terminal and the Bahama dry dock company where nearly all the cruise ships go that are dry-docking  during the winter period when sailing in the Caribbean.

More ships in port but with a lot less guests coming off.

That leaves Nassau and this port has always been an important cruise port. Already before 1900 there is a mention of ships calling there during “excursions” as cruises where called in those days.   Holland America came a lot later as our first cruises went to the Holy Land and only with the down turn of the US economy which really impacted North Atlantic travel after 1929, the company sent its ships on more cruises.   It was the Veendam (II) that called in 1929 during voyage 50 at Nassau as part of an Around the Caribbean cruise from New York. The Captain was Reinier Braun and the cruise lasted exactly a month.  As the guests seemed to have liked the port there was a steady increase in visits and by 1936 Statendam (II), Veendam (II) and Volendam (I) had the port on their schedule. After World War II, the pattern continued until in the 1970’s and 1980’s with Nassau a standard port for the company. Then the big boys arrived and we slowly moved out. Now we still call there but with less frequency. However recently for the Zuiderdam it was the last port of its trans-atlantic crossing.

A well known photo but an unusual scene. The ss Rotterdam (V) normally docked at Nassau but here she is at anchor. It must have been a really busy day.

On these Westerdam cruises we sail by far to the North on our way to Grand Turk Island and that is where we will arrive tomorrow morning. The weather should be good but with some thunder storms in the area. If they stay away from the island area then we will have a partly cloudy day with a gentle breeze and temperatures around 80oF or 27oC.  We will be in with a Carnival ship again and the exciting part of the call is (at least for the navigators) we are docking at the North side of the Pier instead of the South Side.

As was to be expected, disembarkation took a lot longer than normal with such a full house. Nothing the ship could do much about as it all depends on the speed of the immigration process in the terminal. On a holiday weekend like this the CBP is very hard pressed. Their own people want a weekend off and the cruise lines are asking for more help as their ships are fuller than normal. Both sides try their best but something has to give and that is the dis-embarkation flow. Normally I am the last one off the ship, to show my face and to help with the zero count and most of the time I am through around 09.30 or 09.45 hrs. This time it was 11 am before the last group was called off the ship shortly after followed by me, happily waving my custom declaration with nothing on it. But protocol demands that I have one and thus I do fill one out.  This time I was not the last one, they found 19 people still hiding on the ship and they had to be flushed out by the ship’s crew.

So by 11.12 am it was “zero count” and me back on board by 11.25 am when embarkation started again for the next cruise. A late disembarkation finish does not unduly affect the ships operation very much as long as the guests are willing to leave the cabins timely. Holland America allows guests to wait in their state rooms (we are one of the very few companies which have that perk) and mostly the cabin stewards can work around it. It is very unusual for a whole cabin section to have the same disembarkation time and as everybody leaves in staggered groups, the cabin stewards can follow that pattern with cleaning. Then there is the strange phenomenon of impatient people leaving the cabin anyway. The closer it comes to their time of scheduled disembarkation or the time beyond that point, the more guests are moving out. It almost seems that there is a sort of subconscious desire to “push” the process along by first moving to a public room and then closer to the gangway. I suppose a psychiatrist would have some sort of explanation about this. The cabin stewards don’t but they still make use of it.

The Westerdam is sailing on the same schedule again for the coming cruise and she will keep doing so until January when there is a Music Charter cruise in between and for that cruise the ship will also call at Key West.  But we will have a repeat of our last cruise again. It suits me as I can plan in advance and also repeat something if it went wrong the cruise before.

For the ship it was a reasonably quiet call. Also the sub-contractors and other Very Important People, who otherwise Have to be on Board are nowhere to be seen because of Thanksgiving weekend. It will be busy again next week.

My class is moving into the 2^nd week and more and more own work is being assigned. This week they will have to start to give presentations about Safe Working methods on board, they will have to review arrivals and departures to identify the most critical points where it can go wrong———- and what to do when this happens and they have to start taking over work from the sailors on arrival and departure. The latter is done to ensure that the necessary skills are present so they can correct the sailors when the time as a supervising officer comes.

This morning they followed the Safety Environmental and Health officer to learn about waste streams and recyclables going ashore………… and the pile of paperwork that goes with it and then this afternoon it was half of the group on the bridge and half of them on the aft mooring deck.  Tomorrow we will have a theoretical day again.

The weather is improving; most of the nasty bumps from the day from before yesterday are gone and the swells have subsided to less than 10 feet. We will still feel a few bumps as with the disappearing wind, the old swell is having longer waves and the Westerdam will have to go against it. Luckily we are doing only 15 knots and this should make it not so bad. The winds are returning to strong Trade Winds and all will be well again in the world.

We had a very stormy night with winds blowing up to 75 knots. Luckily they were half on the sb. beam and thus it affected the ship less than it could have. If we had had it on the bow then we would have been really moving. Still the ship was quite lively until in the early morning when it came under the lee from Long Island and later Cat Island. Then it was quiet until arrival.

The positive part of this storm was that it blew the rain away and we had a sunny day with only some rain clouds in the distance. When we arrived at the island it was still breezy but it was in the parameters of the ships capabilities and thus the captain could decide that it was safe to make the call. Unfortunately this could not be said for the local tender that is being used to get the Bahamians who operate all the facilities (except food and drink) from Eleuthera to Half Moon Cay so none of the Shorex Excursions could operate during our call. Except the horse riding as the grooms live on the island with the horses.

But the sun shone and the ship emptied out for the beach. When I went for lunch at noon time, there was hardly anybody less than 75 years left in the Lido. They had either been there & seen it or thought it was too wobbly a tender ride to go ashore.

A nice bit of water pouring through. We built the wall on the outside deck for the water to disperse easily.

In the meantime I got the people in the Emergency Functions excited. In my blog from a few days ago I announced that we would have a Damage Control Drill. That was supposed to have taken place yesterday but due to a scheduling conflict it was moved to today. The purpose of an actual Damage Control drill is to repair a hole in the ship’s hull and stop or reduce the ingress of water. As we cannot make a real hole in the hull it is not easy to do something that resembles reality and have the crew learn something from it. Thus enter Yours Truly with his box of tricks into the equation.

The Attack on the holes. The teams protect themselves with a sheet of plywood to be able to work at the holes.

So a few days ago I built a vertical wooden wall with a cadet and two sailors. This morning we rolled it into position, secured it and put four fire hoses with 9 bars of pressure on it. (That is 130 psi of water power) It simulates very well water pouring into the ship.  And then the challenge was to plug the holes. For this purpose we engaged all the emergency teams.  The engine teams take the lead here as they are the experts with pipes, water and steel and the rest gives support. As it is important to bring as much material to the location as possible, the more manpower we have the better it is.

Support teams coming in with equipment and wooden beams.

There were four large holes and if not plugged they would have brought about 1500 tons of sea water into the ship each hour. Our pumps can only manage 150 tons an hour (That is still 3 swimming pools full) and thus the primary task is to reduce the ingress of water to such an extent that the pumps can handle the flow. After that we then have time to find a more permanent solution.  It took the teams exactly 23 minutes to reduce the flow to nearly zero and that is a pretty good result. The engineers were quite excited as well because it is not every day that you get the chance to really practice something that could really happen.

Once we were done all the equipment had to be hosed down with fresh water as sea water is very aggressive and then stored away again. My Dream Team of trainee’s were then tasked to take the wall apart and return the hoses to their Fire Hose Lockers as safety equipment has to be ready at all times. It is always nice to spend a morning messing around with water, especially as it is for a good cause.

The solution. Three main plugs with wedges and towels. The water still leaking through can easily be handled by the pumps.

By 1500 we had all the guests back from the island and after turning the ship around we could set sail for our final port of call. This is the last day of the cruise and tomorrow we are back in our home port Fort Lauderdale.

The weather does not look too exciting. It will be one of those partly cloudy days, where it is only partly cloudy if there are no showers.  And it will be breezy with winds going up to 25 knots or more but there might just be a dip when the ship arrives. Still it will be warm enough with temperatures around 79oF / 26oC.  I hope that the guests had a nice thanks giving cruise, even if the last 24 hours were a bit boisterous. But the ship made Half Moon Cay and that should account for something.

And then it got more bumpy than expected. Cape Hatteras is a sort of depression producing factory in the winter time so about every three days it presents a new creation. It is quite far to the North from where we are and normally those creations go straight across the North Atlantic to Europe and the southern part of the North America does not notice it much. On occasion however the path of a new depression, while going east, follows a bit of a curved route with the curve to the south and then it affects the area above and over the Bahamas.

Shades of green indicate wave heights between 12 and 18 feet. (Photo courtesy of www. Stormsurf.com

Today we were enjoying that “curved path”. A long running swell came in from the North West and then slowly shifted direction to the North East as the depression was moving along.  In the early morning the waves started to build up slowly from 10 to 14 feet with the occasional extra height of 18 feet.  As swell keeps building up on the passing wind we will keep them until we arrive in Half Moon Cay.  We are now right in the middle of the wave field and the ship is moving quite a bit. The problem is it is not a regular rolling pattern with a regular sway but, what I call, a jittery movement. It moves it bit to port, it moves a bit to starboard, then it takes a sudden shudder. All caused by the fact that we have old swell rolling in from the North West and new swell rolling in from the North East.

Apart from the swell there is also the weather tail lying over the area and until the early afternoon we had grey clouds all over the place with the occasional rain showers. Late afternoon it cleared and we even had a tentative sun peeking out.

Whether it affected the guests, I really cannot tell. With a full house of 2150 on board and with large families all over the place it is hard to tell if there are guests “under the weather” or not. It cannot have been many as the public areas were as full as ever.  A major attraction today was the shops who were celebrating “Black Friday” sales by clearing out the store rooms. Then in the afternoon everybody started to gear themselves up for the Thanksgiving Dinner on board. Either by getting all dressed up or by having a casual dinner in the Lido. What I find very nice to see is that the children are often better dressed in formal gear than the rest of the family. For some of them it is even a bigger adventure than just going to a special dinner.

The Pinnacle Grill on board the ms Westerdam. Stock photo Holland America Line

We have of course also Non North Americans on board and for them thanksgiving is not such a big thing.  If you are religious you might go at home to the midweek thanksgiving service for the harvest but it is not a special feast.  If you are not, then the day passes by without any special meaning. Quite a few, especially the Europeans, grabbed the chance to go to the Pinnacle Grill tonight which is our specialty restaurant. The special menu is different from the normal fare and even tonight there is no turkey on the menu. A special restaurant in formal atmosphere makes for a nice ending of the cruise.

The ship will continue to wobble until tomorrow morning 06.30 we turn to the south and sail into the lee of the island of Little San Salvador as Half Moon Cay is located on the south west side. A good thing as well, as on the North side waves of up to 16 feet are expected. But as we will be in the shelter of the island it should not affect us.  How it will be for the rest of the weather is a different question. It all depends on how this depression system will continue to affect the rest of the area. The Bahamas and Florida.

Currently we are expecting a very windy day with winds over 20 knots, even in the lee of the island and a fair chance of showers. Even the temperatures are down to 25oC or 77oF.  I hope the rain will stay away so that the children will still have a nice beach day. One little toddler I saw today had invested in a new bucket and spade in St Thomas and was all ready to dig a big hole in Half Moon Cay beach. I hope he is not going to be disappointed. When I saw him he was in training by trying to dig up the Lido deck but was not getting very far.