Most of the time there are more ways to get to a destination, especially if there are islands in the way. So also for the Great Bahama Banks.  They form a formidable barrier for everybody who has to go from Florida to the Caribbean.  Only a hover craft might be able to go directly, hovering over the water the banks and the reefs but anything which floats and sits in the water has to find a way through it or around it. For the cruise ships there are only two choices, either via the north sailing between Freeport and Nassau or completely around it via the Old Bahama Channel in the south.

It all really depends on a few logical reasons of which route the ship will take. Distance and Weather. The shorter the distance, the less fuel we need and there we go. Except if the weather is bad, then the Captain has to make a decision taking into consideration how bad the weather will be and how much it will affect the Guests; how much faster we have to cover the extra distance or how much later he is willing to arrive. To put it bluntly: is the final destination worthwhile dealing with a rocking ship for a while or not?

This is what the captain thought of yesterday before leaving port as well. In this case the decision was not as difficult as the weather out there was not that bad. The weather front brought rain but not much swell and the ship would move (give me a ship which does not move at all) but not considerably so.  Thus this left only the last question, distance.

The north – red route – is a little bit shorter than the south – blue route.

And then it depends on where you go.  For East Caribbean Cruising, the Bahamas are the top end of a triangle with the long point reaching San Juan. Thus from Ft. Lauderdale if you sail to the Northern islands of the East Caribbean going north of the Bahamas is the shorter distance.  We are going to Puerto Rico and St Thomas and we follow the shorter route. We just make a small deviation in order to call at Grand Turk Island.

We are not the only one. The Navigator of the Seas is heading for Labadee, RCI’s private resort on the North West side of Haiti and she is off our port bow, slowly gaining as she has a slightly longer distance to travel.  She will catch up with us again in San Juan, arriving roughly at the same time.

The Turks and Caicos Islands are at the end of the Grand Bahama Bank but somewhat on the side.

The Turks and Caicos Islands are part of the Bahama chain of islands but together with Great Inagua Island they are on the edge and does not really form an integral part of the Grand Bank system. When looking at the map there is a larger stretch of water which separates them from the other islands compared to the real Bahama Islands.  Maybe because of this it is that they are not part of the Bahamas but are a British Overseas Territory or a Dependency with a Governor appointed by the British Crown. But although it is nice to be British, you also have to live, so the USA dollar is the local currency.

For years we tried to call here but there was only a small dock and we had to operate a tender service.  That was fraught with issues and the swell often made it impossible and the ship sailed away in vain, with a lot of unhappy campers on board. The island did not have the money to invest in a larger tender dock with a suitable breakwater and thus the cruise business passed by. This status quo lasted until about 6 years ago when Carnival decided to put in a Pier and a small Resort. The island is at a perfect distance for a cruise ship call as it is exactly one day sailing away from Florida regardless of whether you take the North route or the South route.

Now there is a nice long Pier which can handle two large cruise ships and a resort has been constructed near the beginning of the cruise pier creating a nice stop for the guests who otherwise would never have visited Grand Turk Island.

Weather for tomorrow: Partly Cloudy with a chance of rain. Temperatures 84oF / 29oC.  If the frontal system gets a move on tonight we might still have a nice day tomorrow.

So I made the transfer to the Westerdam from the Zuiderdam leaving in Willemstad. There are several ways of getting back to Florida, either via Atlanta or to Miami by plane and then further by car. The office chose for the last option and thus I ended up in Miami and from there in a hotel in Weston. The company normally has us staying either in a hotel in Miami or in Fort Lauderdale, but today we had several large ships in port and they all had crew changes and thus the most obvious hotels were full and we ended up in an hotel in Weston.  I have now learned that Weston is about half way between Miami and Fort Lauderdale so this morning we travelled the remaining distance to Ft. Lauderdale.

The most amazing thing today was that I bumped into the same security officer whom I have known since 1981 and then he was already on the job for a few years. This year he is on the port security for 38 years and runs Pier 26 and that means he is always attached to Holland America.

As explained before, my main purpose here on board will be to train a class of 6 new navigators who will then fly out to their respective ships or might still enjoy a Christmas at home before the real life starts. It all depends on the scheduling of the Human Resources department.   They will come on board next Saturday giving me a week to prepare myself to brief the ship and do a few things for the ship as well.

The Westerdam is on a 7 day cruise cycle and thus we will be back in Fort Lauderdale every seven days.  Today we had a busy day, hence all the Hotels were full, as it was a Saturday. We had in port the Navigator of the Seas, the Oasis of the Seas, the Emerald Princess, the Carnival Conquest and our own Westerdam. Because the ships are from different companies and have different sizes, they all dock at their own docks, if and when possible. Princess is normally at Berth 04, Holland America at 26 and the Oasis at 18. When there are more ships in then it goes by size and what fits where. When I came here with the Prinsendam we were always at 04, which is a small berth and the Prinsendam just fitted in.  So two ships where sent to where they fitted. For the remainder of the season the Carnival Conquest will be at 19 and the Navigator of the Seas at berth 29. Berth 29 is the least attractive berth, at least for the captains as you have to back up such a long distance up the IntraCoastal Water Way.  That is one issue but if the ships at Pier 26 and 25/24 are delayed then you have to wait until they are gone as it is really tight to get around the ship at Pier 26, if you are a big boy. And the Navigator is a very big boy.

This cruise we will first have a day at sea, followed by Grand Turk Island, then San Juan (afternoon and evening), St Thomas ( full day), a day at sea again and then last but not least at Half Moon Cay. Back on Saturday in Fort Lauderdale and then sail the same day on the same schedule. The Westerdam is under the command of Captain Rens van Eerten who I have known since we sailed together in the 90’s on the previous Westerdam (II). He went ashore for a while to be a pilot in England, where the family lives, and then he came back to the company. When I sailed with the Prinsendam out of Tilbury I had him once on board as a pilot. It is still a small (Holland America) world.

Today the weather was very rainy and I hope that this weather will move away as this is a beachy – sunshine cruise and having rain clouds all the time would just not do. At the moment it does not look great so we all have to send out positive –vibes to get it changed.

We will sail today at 4 pm. and then go East to get to Grand Turk Island skirting the Bahama Banks on the north side in the Atlantic Ocean. The other option is to go south via the Old Bahama Channel north of Cuba but that is a longer route. So this time we will not have the chance to see Cuba in the rain. The weather is not supposed to move much in the next 24 hours, before it will start to dissipate on Monday.

The passing of hurricane Kate caused some destabilization in the Caribbean and that turned the wind slightly from an Eastern Trade wind to something coming out of the South East. It resulted in the peculiar situation of having a ship which on occasion bumped into the waves. A sort of occasional pitch without rhythm or sequence. Normal on this course (SE) the wind is on the beam and so are the waves and then the stabilizers take care of the movement.

Note the ropes of both ships going over the pier to large inland bollards

The next peculiar thing caused by the wind was that it was blowing from the “wrong side” on arrival. Normally the wind is straight over the island and the whole bollard setup which keeps the ships safely alongside with the mooring lines has been designed accordingly. Long lines with bollards set inland to keep the ship with their portside tightly alongside against an overland wind which can go up to 50 knots in rain squalls. But today the wind is just on the starboard bow and it pushes the ships against the dock instead of trying to blow them off.

Note the outline on the chart screen showing the overhang of the Jewel of the Seas.

We are not the only ship in port, there is also an Apartment of the Seas, the Jewel of the Seas to be correct, which is docked ahead of us. Both ships at the one long Pier and it just fits.  The Jewel would have been in an overhang if the Port authorities would not have installed a dolphin in front of the pier and thus the Jewel could hang over and still have good lines out against the wind.

The ship is staying here until 23.00 hrs. tonight as part of the company policy to offer one late evening call during a cruise longer than 7 days. We try it on seven days as well but it does not always work out that way. Oranjestad on Aruba is a good port to do this as there is something to do for the guests in the evening should they wish so, or stay away instead of having to hurry back at 16.30 hrs. Most shops stay open, restaurants there are a-plenty, and there is a big casino as well. Plus after sunset, when the temperature gets a bit more reasonable it is also just plain nice to walk along the boulevard.  For the crew and some of the experienced Dutch Guests there is the Pilgrims journey to the Paddock. The restaurant near the pier with the cow on the roof. Dutch fast food and cold beer to feel as if back in Holland for a few hours. There is (at least there was last year) a Dutch Pancake restaurant but that is a good 15 minute walk.

Aruba is a bit of a strange situation for us as Dutch people. It used to be Dutch as one of our Colonies in the area (A.B.C islands; Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao) and then it went its own way with a Status Aparte. This means the island runs itself although it still has a Governor who re-presents the Kingdom of the Netherlands. A sort of Commonwealth as the British have. Some of the other islands have much closer ties to the Netherlands and are more financially intertwined. So although Aruba has its Dutch ties its focus is less on the motherland and more on North America where most of the Tourists are coming from.  Apart from oil, Tourism is the major factor in the islands economy and there are more tourists coming from North America than there are from Europe.

The Jewel of the Seas and the Zuiderdam at the Oranjestad Cruise terminal. (Courtesy Lesley Schoonderbeek who has spy camera’s everywhere to keep an eye on her hubby………….LoL)

We sail tonight towards Willemstad Curaçao  which is just around the corner, hence that we can sail so late.  I will be transferring tomorrow to the Westerdam and for that I have to fly back to Florida. So tomorrow there will be no blog as I believe not many readers will be interested in seeing a description of the waiting room in Willemstad Airport.  It should be a similar day as today so I will not have to put my winter coat to leave the ship.

After leaving Half Moon Cay, we sailed for most of the afternoon and evening south through and between the larger islands of the Grand Bahama Bank. Then we crossed the Eastern end of the Old Bahama Channel and dived into the Windward Passage and by  06.00 we had Haiti on our portside and Cuba on our starboard side. The Windward Passage is very wide and fairly long and it took until noon time before we cleared the south west point of Haiti and entered the Caribbean Sea which we will keep crossing on a south westerly course until we reach Aruba tomorrow afternoon.  We have a strong easterly trade blowing which is under a relative angle about half on our portside and that gives a combined wind of about 45 miles per hour over the deck. Luckily the ship has glass wind breakers everywhere and that makes it possible to sit nicely out of the wind and in the sun.

The Zuiderdam at anchor at Half Moon Cay.

Navigation has changed considerably in the last 10 years and not only because of all the gadgets which are nowadays available. Of course we have GPS now, positioning by means of satellites and that has gotten better every year. In 1986 when I came across the first GPS we were happy for half a mile of accuracy every three hours or so. Then this distance dwindled to 100 feet, then to 3 feet and now with the newest systems it is down to a few inches.   And then there are a plethora of other instruments available such as the radar and the electronic chart. Also those are getting better and better all the time and sometimes the captains have to remind the navigators that looking out of the window is still considered part of the safe navigation.

The Zuiderdam bridge team. Far left Administrator, then Helmsman, then Navigator (Staff Captain) and the the Co-Navigator (First Officer). In the back Captain Turner as Operations Director.

What has also changed is the way the bridge is manned. With so many gadgets available, which all can go wrong, you have to set up the bridge team in a different way. Especially when going in and out of port. In the past the Master had a wise conversation with the pilot and then the pilot conned the ship into port.  They still do, but less and less as they do not know all this fancy equipment in detail. So the pilot has to be an integral part of the bridge team who brings his specific local knowledge, but he/she needs the knowledge of the bridge team to operate the complex bridge system and get the ship where it has to go.

As a result the bridge setup has been completely revamped and the various functions rotate over the bridge team members present. The captain is still in command and when he is part of the team he will always carry “The Charge” indicating that he has overall command. That does not mean that he is doing anything himself, he might just be monitoring what the rest of the team is doing.

The team consists out of

1. The Operations Director = he/she who is overlooking the whole operation and does the communication during docking.
2. The Navigator = the officer who is conning the ship and when the ship comes alongside, docks the ship. This could be the captain but not necessary so. The captain might decide that the Staff Captain is doing it, or another officer.  The captain does keep “ The Charge”
3. The Co-Navigator. = the supporting officer who monitors the Navigator to ensure everybody stays with the voyage plan. Nav. and Co – Nav. discuss each course change, speed change, each evolution they want to embark upon before doing it.
4. The Administrator= who keeps the log book, answers the telephones and monitors the alarms of the Safety Centre.
5. The final members of the team are The Helmsman and The Look-out.

Once the ship is out of port, Navigator, Co-Navigator, helmsman and Look out remain and the Captain, administrator and staff Captain leave. The captain hands over “The charge” to the officer who is or becomes the Navigator. By doing that it is always clear who is in charge on the bridge. If the captain later comes back for a cup of coffee, then it does not mean that he suddenly has a direct say in what is going on, on the bridge. He has to get back into the Team, familiarize himself with the situation and then take the charge back.

The whole reason for this team setup is to reduce mistakes. There are always one or more officers watching over each other’s shoulders. A sort of human redundancy and it works very well.

Tomorrow morning we are still at sea and then by 1 pm. we should be in Aruba with what looks like another warm and sunny day. 29oC / 84oF does not exactly indicate cold weather.

During the evening we crossed the Straits of Florida and then during the remainder of the night we sailed under Freeport towards Half Moon Cay. In the early morning we felt the ocean swell as Half Moon Cay is at the edge of the Bahama Bank facing the North Atlantic. Officially the island is called Little San Salvador Island and next to it is San Salvador Island which is larger and has the claim to fame that Columbus discovered America here in 1492. There are several islands that claim that fame and if they are all correct then Columbus must have been busier with landing at all these islands than being occupied in figuring out why he was not in India as he wanted to be.

The Zuiderdam at anchor on the edge. The red triangle is the safety zone. If the ship drifts out of it, then there must be something wrong and the Navigators will take action.

However we knew where we were going as we have been there before. So by 07.30 the good ship Zuiderdam was at anchor and the shore tenders were coming out.  We have large tenders available here and that speeds up the disembarkation to the island considerably. 5 runs to the island and the ship is empty. We anchor here in a similar way as we do in Grand Cayman, at the edge of the island, with the bow in about 30 feet of water and the stern in about 1000 feet of water. The island is rising quite steeply out of the depths of the ocean. With the hook down, only the stern can move and that stern is kept in position by keeping one of the Azipods running and setting the pod under such an angle that the ship is kept from drifting onto the reef and also not yawning too much.

The “Half Moon cay” shore tender and the “Half Moon Clipper” for provisions docked alongside the ship.

Holland America has leased part of the island from the Bahamian government since 1996 and as it is a very long term lease so big investments have been made to make it the most popular private Island in the Caribbean. We are neighbors with Princess, Disney and NCL, who have their islands further to the West, but I understand from various prizes which we received through the years that HMC is considered the best one. It is dedicated to HAL ships but when we are not there, then Carnival is allowed to call here as well; but there will never be two ships of a different brand together. The island can easily handle two ships and today I could see it myself. With 2000 guests ashore, it was still very empty. In the coming cruises the Zuiderdam will meet up with the Eurodam and the Nieuw Amsterdam and then the island will be a little bit fuller.

All prepared for a very last minute return to the ship.

I hopped ashore today to see what they had been adding in the last few years, and the first thing which caught my eye was the waiting area to return to the ship. If it is a nice day, all the guests are coming back at the same time and as the tenders cannot handle this, you have to wait. Before everybody had to stand in the burning sun while waiting (after having been burnt in the sun already all day) but now a covered area has been created. Here the guests go through the security scanner before they can walk straight onto the shore tender. The only thing which is missing is a small bar where they sell Heineken. A small pint while waiting in line would just be my piece of cake. The guide – rope – lanes are not so much in use for our guests as they come back fairly staggered but when there is a 3500+ Carnival ship in, then they are needed due to the long lines by the last minute returns.

The inside of the pirate ship. A bit strange to see our own bar tenders working ashore.

The other thing I had not seen yet, although it was built a few years ago, was the pirate ship.  Inside the hull is a bar with a band stand where they play Calypso music. It is just across from the BBQ house which is the main focal point of the island apart from the beach. All food and drink outlets are manned by the ship’s crew, while the facilities are being looked after by the Bahamians who come to the island each day with one of the boats. Apart from the island manager and those who look after the horses there is not anybody living on HMC. They all come from next door Eleuthera.

The Barbeque hall is a covered but open area with the open kitchen along one length and self serving buffets on a 90o angle at several intervals.

The food and drink all comes from the ship and is taken to the island by a special tender, the Half Moon Clipper and whatever is left over, returns the same way just before departure.  That departure was set for 15.00 hrs. and then the Zuiderdam turned her nose to the south, heading for Oranjestad Aruba where we are scheduled to arrive two days from now at 1 pm.

The weather looks good, we had a hurricane in the area, Kate, but she turned to the north and did not create more wind there that can normally blow. But because she came by, it “sucked” all the wind away and today we had no wind at all.  So it was a very warm day but as we are on a Caribbean Cruise that is what it is all about.

And thus we docked in the very early morning at 04.30 hrs. Although I am not involved with the routine ships operation I still could enjoy it because as soon as the ship was docked the Shell/ Break doors were opened, ready for offloading luggage and as luck would have it my cabin was just above it. Whatever you try on a ship, construction and design wise, you will always hear something somewhere sometime. That why it is a ship and not an apartment building. Luckily the shell doors only open up in the home port at an early hour and then the guests have to wake up anyway. Time for breakfast and then time to disembark. 

For disembarking I was part of the process today as having the legal status of an L visa traveler, the immigration officers could not wait to meet me and I had to show my face in the terminal once all the guests had disembarked. After having yet received another stamp in my passport I was declared free to go onto American soil. It is a pity that the CPB uses the same stamp at every airport and every ships port otherwise I would have by now have a very nice collection. But they use the same one everywhere and so my passport pages are just blue and red. Getting back on board was possible as soon as the “zero count” was achieved, meaning that indeed everybody had disembarked.

In the meantime USCG inspection was going on with the necessary alarms and whistles and on the pier it was also the hectic activity of unloading baggage, loading provisions and later on with loading baggage again. But with all this going on the crew still managed to do what it had to do and that was to satisfy the demands and requirements of the USCG inspection so by the end of the day we could sail with the required certificate duly received and stamped.

The Zuiderdam is now starting an 11 day cruise, which will also see the ship popping in and out of the Panama Canal by means of making a turn in the Gatun Lake. But we will start the cruise with a call at Half Moon Cay where we will be tomorrow.

Not un-common for Ft. Lauderdale, our departure was somewhat delayed due to late arriving luggage. This is an issue we seldom have when sailing in Europe as most guests come in the day before and if they don’t, then they arrive mostly with own transportation. For cruises out of Florida this is not the case, a lot of guests fly in on the day and the luggage is not always flying with them at the same time or to the same place.  Sometimes the problem can be alleviated with having the luggage come to the next port. For a Tampa cruise that works quite well as the next day is a call at Key West. For this cruise it does not work as our next port of call is Half Moon Cay and there is no easy way of getting anything there. Everything comes by ship, our own ship. So if the captain can afford to wait, then the captain will wait.  We are now looking at a few thousand dollars of extra fuel to make up for the lost time but it is all about avoiding dis-satisfied guests, even if we on the ship cannot do anything about lost luggage. We were not the only ones who were delayed as the Seabourn Odyssey only managed to pull out just ahead of us and the Celebrity Equinox followed directly behind us.

We blew the ships whistle loud and long for this Lady and her flag.

Sailing out of Ft. Lauderdale is always good fun as much to the chagrin of the competition we have a number of dedicated HAL cruisers in the apartment building at the fairway. Today there was only one HAL flag flying but I have seen 4 or 5 in the past.  Most ships are willing to give a flag to the residents who really live there as it all adds up to a nice show. (I do check if guests are really living there as the flags are not cheap; so proof of I.D is required and then it depends on how many spare flags we have on board. Ocean weather is not kind to flags and we go through a lot of them at a steady pace.

Tomorrow we are at Half Moon Cay and I hope to hop ashore there, as they keep adding attractions to the island and I have not been ashore there for several years.

Weather for tomorrow:  very warm and no wind. 86oF /30oC, partly cloudy leaning to very sunny.

Well the traffic was less than expected; the Carnival Ecstasy had an overnight stay and left in the morning and that meant that today we had about 2500 less people ashore.  We arrived at 07.00 hrs. with the Carnival Valor behind us at the horizon. We swung the ship on arrival and thus the Valor had to slow down a little bit until the turning basin was empty, but that is the danger if you set your arrival time too close to another ship. The Valor docked in the end sb. side nose in next to us to reduce the docking time as she had a short stay, supposedly sailing by 14.30 this afternoon.

As you can see by the black line, ships progress went east of the track line and then drifted nicely back in again once coming into the harbor.

Nassau is not a difficult port as such. The wind is normally steady, the turning basin is large enough to even accommodate the Oasis of the Seas and since the Piers have been extended it is good docking here as well.  The biggest challenge is to get through the entrance with the wind full on the port beam. We had this morning a sort of Trade Wind blowing (Although the Bahamas are a little north of the official Trade Wind area) with a wind force 4 which pushed the ship, drifted it to the West.  To compensate for this the ship is steered more to the East and if you do not understand what is going on, you think it is heading straight for the rocks. But when coming closer and closer the wind is doing it’s bit and you are back in the middle and on the track line again when entering the port.

When swinging the Radar show a little blue ship which we call the predictor. It indicates where the ship will go (eventually) if the maneuver is not continued in the right direction.

Inside the harbor there is always less wind. The Hotels on Paradise Island behind the port break the wind, the ships already docked in the port do so to and any other obstructions such as vegetation, it all helps. We did have wind force 4 while outside but when in the turning basin it had reduced itself to a small wind force 3.  So the ship could be happily swung around and backed into the berth.

But if you do, then the predictor will show the exact movement to the dock, and then all it takes is breaking on time.

Most captains prefer to swing on arrival. As a rule of thumb there is normally less wind in the port in the morning and if you have the time, lying in port with the nose out makes it a lot easier for a quick departure if necessary. The docks are almost straight in line with the harbor entrance and leaving means a kick ahead and a minor course change to starboard and the ship is back into open waters.

Now to my remark of yesterday about the pigs. For some time some of the snorkel tours and now also some dedicated tours go past an un-inhabited island called Big Major Cay.  In the mists of time a number of pigs ended up on the island and as there was enough vegetation and fresh water they managed to survive and even thrive there. Slowly but steadily the pigs got an understanding with the people passing by and came swimming out for food. I never knew that pigs could swim but they are intelligent animals so why not? Dogs can swim, most cattle can swim and so can elephants. Thus swimming with pigs became an official tourist attraction. Once I found out about this, I thought maybe it would be something for us as well at Half Moon Cay. We already have swimming with stingray’s, so why not some porkers as well???

A long time ago my parents had friends who owned a sort of farm, or better said a regular house with a lot of land that was farmed on the side. As it was almost in the woods, there was the occasional issue of animal intruders coming out of the woods and human intruders going into the woods. My parent’s friends had found a very effective security system to deal with this menace.  A pig and a gaggle of geese. Both can by very territorial if you let them and the effects are often more spectacular than what a watch dog can achieve.  Once the pig (and this was a big boar) cornered two thieves who had planned a raid on the chicken coop and their pleas for mercy could be heard half a mile down the road. Foxes attacking the chicken coop were dealt with by the Geese, also very effectively. Whenever I now see or hear about pigs I have to think about this guard-pig. I wonder if these pigs on their own island are also so effective in keeping intruders out.  I know they do welcome tourists as they bring food; which is a major point of focus in the lives of pigs. (http://www.bahamas.com/swimmingpigs)

The Zuiderdam will sail tonight around 6 pm. heading for our final destination Ft. Lauderdale and dock at Pier 26 in Port Everglades.  The ship will be docked by tomorrow morning 04.30 and we are hoping to have the CBP inspectors on board by 05.00 so we can get all the crew through the immigration inspection before the USCG comes on board for their inspection.  As it is a Monday it is not as busy as during the weekend and thus we are scheduled to be in port only with the Celebrity Equinox.

Weather for Fort Lauderdale:  Mostly sunny with temperatures around 86oF /30oC.

It is getting warm outside. The crew are starting to walk around closing the doors to the outside decks and also the inner glass doors to keep the cold air in and the warm air outside.  Which is unfortunately as about as effective as carrying coals to Newcastle but they try. The wind is still on the quarter and that does not help with cooling things down either. At least with a Trans Atlantic cruise you can slowly get accustomed to the change in temperatures, it is not as drastic as when you travel by airplane. By tomorrow the guests should be fairly well prepared for what will hit them ashore.

And if it is already so nice and warm in the open sea where the water always cools things down a bit, then we might have a very warm day in Nassau tomorrow.  The weather forecast gives a full sunny day with temperatures of 85oF or 29oC but with a gentle breeze. Tomorrow is a Sunday and in the old days it meant that in the morning everything was closed until after church. During this call we have 5 ships in port so I expect that commerce will win out in this case.

Apart from us, there will the Enchantment of the Seas, the Majesty of the Seas (both RCI); the Carnival Ecstasy and the Carnival Valor (both Carnival) in port. So we will have a good 10,000 cruise guests invading the local strawmarket and adjacent shops.  Some have already confided in me that they will go directly to the big Casino and resort just behind the port on Paradise Island. As a non-gambling man I find it hard to see the fascination in going to another casino while you have one on board, in both you lose your money so what is different, but I seem to miss the point somehow.  The casino is a major attraction for cruise guests.

Nassau in the quieter days of the 1980s when two cruise ships was a busy day. This postcard showing the Noordam (III) and the Homeric later Westerdam (II). The two ships together mean that the photo was made between 1986 and 1988.

Nassau has always been a cruise ship destination in the same way as Bermuda and  Havana in the old days, for the simple reason it is so close by. It is a short hop from Fort Lauderdale and Miami and even from New York it is not too far away. Holland America has been calling here since the 1930’s when the old Statendam and Veendam made cruises here in the depression years. Then it was still a sleepy resort, recovering from the wild days of piracy of Black Beard a long time ago and following British traditions in every way,  even driving on the wrong side of the road. (And often with American cars that do not have the steering wheel …………………..)

Nassau is more or less located in the Centre of the Grand Bahama Bank which stretches from Florida all the way down to the North tip of Haiti. The bank is made up of thousands of small islands, islets, reefs and sand and coral banks and you have to sail around it to get away from Florida. Either by following the coast line of Cuba when taking the south route or sailing south of Freeport when taking the northern route.

A sort of space 3 – D photo of the Grand Bahama Bank. The black”sock” in the middle is the Tongue of the Ocean and Nassau lies about one 3rd down from open sea. (Photo courtesy www.Terracolor.net)

Nassau is laying in a sort of natural deep bay surrounded by shallow area’s on three sides and thus to get away from it again you have to sail north before you can go either West (USA) or East (rest of the World) they call Nassau hilly, as it is on average a little bit higher than all the other islands and islets. Highest point is 37 meters (approx. 100 feet)If you want to see the highest point in the Bahamas, a real local mountain, then you have to go to Cat island which reaches a dizzying high of 61 meters. (approx. 170 feet)

Tomorrow the guests will have the choice of shopping, sightseeing, going to the casino, or doing a bit of water sport including snorkeling and pig feeding. More about the pigs tomorrow.

We are almost there. Tomorrow is the last sea day before we arrive at Nassau.  Although the guests are very happy, I start to sense a little restlessness of everybody wanting to run off the ship. My experience is that 5 days are about the limit that people can do before uneasiness sets in.  The longest stint at sea I have done without calling somewhere was on the old Nieuw Amsterdam when we sailed empty from Hilo in Hawaii to Sydney Australia for the Olympic Games.  12 days at sea. The whole crew loved the idea but after day 6 all the work was done, there were only so many parties we could throw and a certain weariness set in. We have not reached that state of weariness here on board, the guests are kept too well entertained for that but still it is a long period.  To serve the cruise business properly there should be an island on the crossing about every three days or so.  Maybe something for Carnival Corp. to think about. They are building docks everywhere to create new destinations so why not a new island. Talk to the Dutch dredging companies and in no time we would have a 2^nd Azores somewhere.

But that is not the case and thus we have a nice and long crossing. At least the weather is helping with following winds today. There was about 22 knots from the South East and as we are doing just over 15 knots at the moment, it meant that we had a very nice and gentle breeze of relative wind blowing over the decks. Perfect sea day.

My day was split in two parts today. This morning I gave training to the whole kitchen staff of how to respond to fire and other calamities and this afternoon it was time for my HAL History Lecture in the show lounge. With the latter, I guess, there were about 500 guests in the lounge and with most of them spreading out comfortably meant that I had a full house. Hopefully they enjoyed my 90 minutes of talking about DAM ships.

The audience in the kitchen was much smaller, about 40 cooks of various ranks and gradations, but the topic was a lot more serious.  After the Engine room the kitchen is the most dangerous part of the ship as there are open flames, hot oil and grease and metal surfaces (hot plates) which easily ignite if procedures are not being followed correctly. On top of that, each class of ship is different. Different in lay out and in different in equipment. Thus we hold constantly refresher classes. Most of our cooks have been with the company for years and much of what is brought up during the training is old hat so to speak. But there they still learn new things.

Although a lawn sprinkler is not exactly the same, it shows the size of the droplets clearly.

The most important one is Sprinkler versus HI-Fog.   A sprinkler system has long been the best answer to fires. If there is a flame and the flames go up, the bulb in the sprinkler head bursts and the water comes spraying out under high pressure. The only thing is, spraying water in hot oil makes it more dangerous. It splashes the (burning) oil everywhere and thus instead of extinguishing the fire it makes it worse. Thus no sprinklers in the ships galleys, at least not near cooking equipment. The S-class and R class, equipped with sprinkler systems, follow that rule.

The HI-fog is mist coming out under very high pressure with very small droplets, giving a much greater cooling effect.

Now for a cook who transfers from those ships to a Vista or Signature Class ship suddenly comes across a sprinkler head above his deep-fat fryer in the kitchen. And now he/she is totally confused as it has been drilled into him/her we do not want water being splashed into hot oil. That is where the constant training comes in to familiarize with the new ship. It is not a sprinkler head but a HI-Fog nozzle. It works the same as a sprinkler but instead of solid water coming out it emits a very fine water mist. So fine that it cools the area, brings a fire temperature down but does not rain/splashes into the oil basin of the deep fat fryer. It either dissipates on the heat but mostly it takes the heat away so quickly that by the time it reaches the source of the fire, the fire is out.

This morning we had a few very puzzled faces again but finally they all got the message and were quite happy as it meant there was now another system that could protect their station in case of a fire.

Tomorrow will be another nice and warm day at sea and then we will have the final shopping opportunity in the Bahamas. I think that most guests will be packing tomorrow as the day after Nassau is the end of the cruise.

Since our cruise began we have gone from GMT + 1hrs, to today’s GMT -4 hrs. as last night we had another hour back on the clock.  Giving time changes is something which is done in conjunction with the on board activities. If we sail between two countries then we have to do it during the night in between but on a crossing it does not matter as long as we arrive on the correct time at our next port of call.

As I mentioned in a previous blog we gave an hour back during the night of the Filipino crew show. The crew could do their show and did not lose any sleep over it. A strange result of this time change manipulation is the resulting times of sunrise and sunset. Tonight the sun will be setting just after 5 pm which is a bit early for where we are sailing. If the time changes would have been given in a different way then that same sun could also have set on the ship around 7 pm. It is amazing what power a ship’s captain has: being able to let the sun set whenever he wants it to.

There are many variations in giving time changes. Some companies such as Carnival and RCI do not give time changes at all during their Caribbean Cruises. They simply stay on Miami time and it works well. It saves giving that dreaded hour forward which really empties the ship out. Holland America’s tradition is to do time changes, also on these 7 day or 14 day cruises. (NCL does the same) Why I really do not know, it is a sort of tradition I suppose. I tried it once, not giving any time changes at all, while on the Veendam when we were doing 7 and 14 day cruises from Tampa and it did not make any difference to the guests. Nobody came back late on board and nobody got confused by a church tower clock while ashore.  In a way it was even easier because when they mingled with guests from those other companies, they were at least all on the same time.  Both in the bar ashore as well as coming back to the ship.

Here on board we go the hours back and forward at 2 am. in the morning. Again in between ports you have not much choice to do any other time. On crossings I personally prefer to do it at lunch time or 1 pm. During the Voice from the Bridge I would just announce, we going 30 minutes forward or 30 minutes back if it was a crossing or a cruise with several sea days. Again it worked well. The guests did not forget their clocks as it was announced over the P.A system. They did not go to bed earlier as there was no hour forward.  One of the Hotel Directors who I worked with had made a whole study about it; to see what revenue wise was the best solution.  Night time or day time. His findings (although the sampling was not over that many voyages) for revenue turned out better to go an hour back during the night and to go 30 minutes forward during the day, depending what sort of time change was needed.  But as our guests are in general not party animals, the effect on the On Board Revenue did not result in breathtaking increases.

The crew liked the 30 minutes forward better at lunch time than the hour forward at night, as now they did not lose any sleep but only 30 minutes of break time in the afternoon.  But with so many people, and so many views I do not think there is a perfect time change. We just have to do it to remain in sync with the world.

We still have one hour to go to get the ship on USA and Bahamas time and that hour will be given during the night from 6 to 7 November, which is a Formal night and that helps the guests to decide to stay out a little bit longer as they have dressed up for the occasion anyway. There is also the Captain’s Gold Ball and thus he and the officers will not lose any sleep because of this party either.

Today we had a sunny day again and we nearing tropical temperatures. Noon time reached 26oC or 79oF and I saw the first guest coming by who had definitely spent a little too much time in the sun. A lot of guests forget that sitting on the deck of a cruise ship gives you a double whammy as there is not only the direct sun coming at you but also the sunlight reflected from the water and from the white ships superstructure. Wise people have told me, if you normally would do 20 minutes in the sun for the first day, when on a ship cut it down to 15 minutes or better even less and use a sun block of at least 35 or over.  I have solved the issue by not going in the sun at all anymore. Let’s say I learned my lesson in the old days by not listening to the wise lessons of others.

Tomorrow we are looking forward to a similar day as today and during the coming night we will be passing south of Bermuda but we will be too far south to see it.