During the night we approached Israel and this kept the dog shift on the bridge fully occupied. Israel has a sort of layered security system which means you have to call in every step of the way and you might be called in between your compulsory calls as well. 100 miles (never works very well as it is too far for the VHF to reach) 25 miles, 12 miles and then again near the pilot station.   Then you see fast moving blips on the Radar screen which are torpedo boats or similar moving around without having any navigation or other lights visible. Occasionally you see even a submarine popping up although the dog shift did not see any this time.

So plenty of security around from the shore side and of course the ship did not stay behind. In principle, the flag state or the visiting state decides the level of security. This is called the MARSEC level. There are three levels. I = normal; where we only follow the regular requirements.  II = heightened. Now there are extra patrols on the ship, spot checks and restrictions on visitors. III = Maximize all security measures possible. This means no visitors, no loading of any kind, under water inspections etc. etc. basically now we do everything that can be done with whatever we have available on board. If a home port would ever go to level III than we could not call there to embark/disembark guests so raising a security level can have grave implications. Tunisia went to level III after the recent attacks on the museum and thus no cruise ship is calling there at the moment. Only when the MARSEC level is lowered again might the cruise companies be tempted to return. I did not see our Security Officer walking around with a helmet on this morning so I assume that HAL did not dictate that much of an increase. Israel is already doing more than enough.

Jaffa Old Town

The tour to Jaffa was partly by Bus and then on foot through the little old town. Jaffa turned out to be a delightful old town with little shops and artist’s studio’s…………… and a flying Orange Tree. In Europe Jaffa is very well known as a Brand under which oranges are sold.  Somehow as the oranges were exported from here, the name got stuck to it. Basically Jaffa’s prosperity is largely due to the orange. Otherwise it still might have been a sleepy fishing village. To commemorate this they have this “hovering in the air” Orange Tree. A pot / container hanging in the air. Suspended from three strong wires and in it is a real life Orange Tree which bears fruit as well. The significance of having the Orange Tree hanging in the air escapes me a little bit but it is certainly original.

To commemorate it they have this “hovering in the air” Orange Tree. A pot / container hanging in the air. Suspended from three strong wires and in it is a real life Orange Tree which bears fruit as well. The significance of having the Orange Tree hanging in the air escapes me a little bit but it is certainly original.

Flying Orange ???? Why Not

I stayed on board but had the chance to look at the Thomson Spirit, ex Nieuw Amsterdam, the first ship I was captain on in 1999. Then I sailed her out as Staff Captain after the Olympic Games in Sydney and stayed with her when she was sold to the American United States Lines as the Patriot.

Unfortunately that project did not work out and 9 months later I was back on board to prepare her for hand over to the Greeks from whom Thomson Cruises is now chartering the ship. She looked very good from the outside and I saw they had even added balcony’s to the Suites on deck 10 behind the Crows nest. Visiting was not really possible as port security was a real challenge to deal with.

The Prinsendam is staying until 23.00 hrs. Haifa is just around the corner at no distance away and as you never know if and how long the tours to Jerusalem and Bethlehem might be delayed in returning it is better to build in some extra time, just for the case of.

So tomorrow we are in Haifa and the weather is predicted to be sunny and warm with temperatures around 70F or 21 oC. This time I tend to agree with that prediction as the wind has been dying down during the course of the day and a frontal system with a band of rain is supposed to pass by this evening.  The weather today was more in less with the pessimistic option I offered yesterday. It remained very breezy during the day and that kept the temperatures down.

During the night the strong winds slowly abated and by day time the Ionian Sea had reduced itself from being a Tempestuous to just a wobbly sea. Wind force 7 – 8 down to 5 on the Beaufort scale. It still feels breezy around the ship as it also making some wind by itself.

The route is taking us on a South Easterly course towards Ashdod our next port of call.  That means that around 5 pm we will be between Cyprus and Egypt, although closer to Egypt than to Crete. Then we will aim for a 0600 hrs. arrival at the pilot station for a 0700 docking. Our official arrival time is 0800 hrs. but the Captain has decided to arrive earlier to help out with the immigration procedures as the Israeli Authorities want to see everybody on board in person. Both Guests and Crew.

Due to the local situation the pre arrival procedures are very extensive and the administration department has been very busy the last few days to get all the paper work faxed and pre-approved. A process which started after Barcelona and then kept going on with guests coming and going in the ports since then and the same for crew of course. Then there are always questions about what is being submitted and how it is submitted, European date writing against American, and it all kept the paper work people of the Pursers department happily occupied, although happily  might not be the right word.  Luckily once the initial immigration hurdle has been passed, the other port visits are normally a little bit easier. Thus Haifa, for the day after tomorrow, should have less checks and easier going on and off procedures.

For Ashdod and Haifa we are really there for the various tours to the Biblical places. Shopping is not very high on the Agenda to put it gently. Apart from nearly all the guests going on tour (last year we only had 4 guests left on board during the Ashdod call) also as many crew as possible will get the chance to go to Jerusalem. We are running a Christian tour to the holy city and a Muslim tour. The funny thing is that there is not much of a difference between the two tours. Only when it comes to the Temple Mountain the Christian tour goes to the Wailing Wall side and the Muslim tour goes to the Mosque side.  So tomorrow the Christian buses will be full of Philippino’s and the Muslim buses will be full of Indonesians. But knowing them, they will all end up in the same restaurant for lunch, as both groups like the same  food and through the years we have found a restaurant which delivers to all tastes and religions..

As we now have the experience that in Ashdod not many guests remain on board, the Hotel Director is also quite comfortable with letting a greater number of cooks go out for the day. It is always hard for the kitchen department to get away for a whole day as the service must go on. But cooking for only a few can be done by a skeleton crew and if needed I can always help out. There is nobody more proficient on board when it comes to the professional operation of a microwave. I can even cook eggs in it, sunny side up. (As long as they have this special Tupperware gadget on board…………..)

So the whole ship is looking forward to Israel for the coming two days. Lots of history, lots of emotion and hopefully very little immigration fuss. Weather forecast for tomorrow is a bit of a guess. Looking positively at the weather forecast will mean it is going to be sunny with temperatures around the 70’s. (20oC)  if you see it negatively there might be early morning fog and a chilly day of 58o F or 14oC.

We will see, we are supposed to be in port together with the Thomson Spirit which is the old Nieuw Amsterdam of Holland America Line and my first ship as captain back in 1999. And that is something for me to look forward to.

During the night it was rather breezy, to use an understatement, with a few moments of storm force winds blowing around the ship.  That translated into a very windy arrival as well. However Iraklion has the wind either straight from the North (Etesian winds) or straight from the South (Sahara winds) and thus the docks are lined up North to South to make the docking as easy as possible. As long as you can make the swing safely in the port, from an East/West heading to a North/South one, as the docks are perpendicular onto the entrance of the port, you are in good shape. When you get the nose or the stern into the wind then the ship does not drift anymore and you can park easily and safely alongside the dock.

On occasion the swell broke over the breakwater.

And so we did. But as the dock space was fully open to these Northerly winds barreling in, our guests had a challenge to walk to the Gate. Security did not allow any taxi’s on the dock and there weren’t any golf carts or other mobiles to help with transport. I was able to observe the interesting phenomena of ———-Rollator Against the Wind———-. I felt sorry for the guests but on the other hand, this would have figured greatly in a Marx Brothers movie.

I also had to lean against the wind pulling a suitcase as my Lord and Master descended today on the ship and she will be sailing with me until Istanbul 9 days from now. We have our objectives nicely divided, she goes sightseeing and shopping and I go to work.

Wind or no wind, Tai-Chi will continue………… every morning.

That work took me today by starting to walking around the ship checking where my help can be utilized the best. Normally I take care of a mixture of training, providing training materials and updating procedures. This time an inspection element has been added to it to assist the captain. The Prinsendam is an older ship and as a result has a number of challenges with the way it has to comply with all the rules and regulations. Not that the ship does not comply, it does of course, but as it is an older ship, we have to use a different approach to reach the same result.

Hereby it helps that I am myself from an older era. I went through the ranks when the Prinsendam was built as the Royal Viking Sun in 1988, so old rules make sense to me, much more than to somebody who just starts out. Having a continuous career also means that the upgrading of the rules through the years to the current day is easier to understand.

Thus today was clipboard day and with a General Master Key in hand I went nosing around. I first look at all the hardware (the ship) and after I have met most of the crew for training, I will look at the software (the crew). The two need each other to deliver the complete Holland America Line package for a safe and luxurious cruise.

Crete was a windy but sunny call today and as the winds were from the North it might have been chilly but at least there was no sand in the air. The Sahara winds from the South bring in lots of brown sand and that gives maybe a much warmer day but also a much stuffier day. I do not know if sand affects Asthma sufferers, I know that pollen and traffic pollution does, but I always feel as if I am constantly munching on grit when I am in the Greek islands and the winds are from the South.

We left at 5 pm. and are now having a slightly wobbly ride towards Ashdod in Israel where we will be the day after tomorrow. While heading in the general direction of the Promised Land, we have also been promised improving weather with the winds easing down step by step.

We are on now on one of those stretches between ports which really do not fit in a proper cruise schedule. The distance between Malta and Crete is too far to cover in one night and for a full day at sea, you are really sailing on a slow-boat. So we are happily trundling along with a speed of 11 knots. A good thing as well, as during the evening and early morning there was a considerable amount of wind and thus quite a few bumps in the road. Had the Prinsendam been going full speed we would have noticed all those bumps in a very distinctly way. Now with a slower speed the bow rides the waves instead of bashing into them and it results in a much more comfortable ride.

Today we are deep water. The Mediterranean Sea as a whole is not so deep.  In the long and distant past, when the Oceans were lower, this area was once land and only with the rising seas this land area was eventually broken into near Gibraltar and flooded. But East of Sicily and South of Greece there are quite some considerable depths which are more normal in the Oceans than in an inland sea.   As you can see from the Chart there is a deep blue triangle right in the middle of the Med. This area is called the Ionian Sea and the ocean floor dips down to over 5000 meters. (The deepest deep is the Calypso Deep with a depth of 5,267 meters or 17.280 feet)

There is another interesting issue with the Med. One that affects in a small way the seafarer.  As there is more salt water coming in, than fresh water, the Med is a little bit more salty than the oceans to which it is connected. How does affects the seafarer? Well, every ship has a draft and the draft depends on what water that ship is sitting in. Salt Water with its higher density creates more buoyancy then Fresh Water. Fresh water has a salt content of zero; we call that 1000.  Regular sea water has a salt content of 35 grams per 1000 grams water or 35 parts per thousand.  The Med can reach 37 to 38 parts per thousand. This means that the ships draft will reduce by the influence of those 3 extra parts per 1000 more than in the Ocean.

This is not the bow of the Prinsendam but an image plucked from Wikipedia. The Draft Marks are in Feet. Nowadays more and more ships are metric.

Although 3 parts extra is not that much, the total of 38 extra parts per thousand is considerable and it affects the ships stability. As a rule of thumb, the deeper a ship lies in the water, the more stable it is. Hence the great interest a navigation officer has in the draft. As a result a deck officer will check the draft in every port before finalizing the stability calculation for the coming voyage. In the old days we had to run around the ship, now we have digital read outs on the bridge. But as that is mechanical, it can go wrong and thus the deck officer still regularly verifies if those read outs are correct. We have those read outs (called draft marks) at the bow, the middle and at the stern. By combining all three, as the ship is not always at the same draft at the bow as at the stern, the navigator can figure out the exact displacement of the ship in the water. By checking the salinity, he/she can then exactly figure out what the weight of the ship is and thus calculate if the stability is good and if it is safe to sail.

Related to this, is the existence of the Plimsoll Mark on the side of the hull. This harkens back a number of years. In the good old days, everybody just loaded the ships anyway they wanted and some unscrupulous ships owners wanted as much as possible and on a regular basis ships sank, capsized or cracked open. And there were lots of them. A gentleman called Mr. Hall invented a measuring system so you could see on the hull if the ship overloaded or not. How deep the ship could go depended on the salinity of the water and that was indicated as well. A British parliamentarian pushed for this system to be adopted into British Law and somehow he got his name attached to it as the Plimsoll Mark. Nowadays the whole world is using it. It is embedded in Maritime Law and each commercial ship is required to have it.

Tomorrow we are in Heraklion or Iraklion, Crete. We are expecting a chilly day; same as we had today as the winds keep blowing from the north. Only tomorrow even more so.  We will be docking at the passenger terminal as we are the only cruise ship expected. When we dock, there will be a lot of wind on the beam while lining up, so I expect that the captain has a few tugboats lined up. As far as I remember one tug is compulsory anyway. Courtesy of a harbor master who does not like dents in his piers from captains thinking they can do it without.  Noon temperature is supposed to reach 66oF/ 19oC. But my guess is that this is out of the wind and in the sun.

They call the port of Valletta the Grand Harbour and that is correct for more reasons than one. First of all it is a very large enclosed harbor which can handle any draft as long as the ships fit through the breakwater and it is surrounded by monumental buildings erected through the ages until the current day. Although nowadays not much new can be erected as the place is full and the locals are not planning to knock something old down to get a more modern creation in place. This has made sailing in and out always spectacular or just plainly enjoyable encase you are not overawed with what you see.  It is just an amazing place.

Busy day again in Valletta.

We were not the only ones who thought so as behind us was the MSC Magnifica which came in just before 08.00 hrs. and the Seabourn Spirit which was already there yesterday. This is one of the three smaller ships of Seabourn and she is on her last voyage as Seabourn is phasing out the smaller ships. All three have been sold to Windstar which once was also part of Holland America. Seabourn which is now a sister company to us, is replacing them with bigger ships, roughly the Prinsendam size and already has three of those in operation. The Seabourn Sojourn, Quest and Odyssey. Two more ships are under construction, the Seabourn Encore and the Seabourn Ovation. They will come into service in 2016 and 2018. The small Seabourn ships were nice and because of their size they could visit ports not open to larger ships but they lacked one thing and that was balconies. Some years ago the company tried to alleviate this problem by installing French Balconies in the suites above the lifeboats but it did not fully solve the issue.  Hence new ships and to get balconies on, you have to build them larger as well. You are no allowed to have Balconies under lifeboats and that means a redesign of the ship and that means you have to go larger. Still 40.000 tons is not that large.

Most of our guests went ashore and if not on tour, they could reach the city of Valetta easily as it was just across the street from the gangway. If you want to walk everywhere, or better said climb everywhere, you have to be a bit agile as it is all uphill when you leave the ship (although you go downhill when coming back) and that is quite an exercise. Hence the taxi’s and the Big Red Bus being very busy.

I created my first bit of “mayhem” today by throwing an un-expected fire drill today. The last two days I have been busy with paper work today I got the chance to get the crew going.  According to company policy we have to conduct and un-announced fire drill every three months to test the crew’s alertness for a real event; incase that would happen. Normally we have fire& training drills around 10.30 in the morning as this time does not upset the daily operation of the ship too much.  However if you do not occasionally do it at a different – at an unannounced time – then the human penchant for routine and tradition takes over.  Thus today I put the Officer Bar “on fire” and waited to see what was going to happen. Well at lot happened and in no time I had fully dressed firefighting teams barging into the Officer Bar and even crashing through doors in order to get to the fire as soon as possible. I am glad to say there is nothing wrong with the alertness of the crew of the Prinsendam and they followed the Company’s firefighting doctrine to the letter. It went very well.

And I can assure you, they were blanks they fired. This was shot nbr 5.

Sail away went well as well. While sailing out, the city of Valetta greeted the Prinsendam with a 7 shot Gun salute from high up the bulwarks of the City’s old defense works.  Nice to see and even nicer to hear.  Old guns can make a lot of noise.

Tomorrow we have a sea day, and it is expected to be a bit of a wobbly one and then we will be in Iraklion, Crete. To do so we have to get on Greek time and therefore the clocks will go forward one hour tonight. We are scheduled to be the only ship there, so we will have Crete to ourselves.  Wobbly weather caused by North Easterly winds and thus it will also be chilly for most of the day.

It did not look good during the night. Around 3 am. a heavy rain squall hit the ship and a ferocious wind blew around it, but it passed and in the morning it was back to the normal – windy day- as yesterday. Now it would all depend on it if the lee was good enough as the wind did continue to blow from the right direction, straight over land providing the maximum lee possible.

It turned out it was enough. There was still 20 to 25 knots blowing but as the ship could anchor close enough to the shore the wind could not create enough waves and the swell which curved around the island was not that high. We were in business. It was going to be a windy day with a wobbly tender ride but we were there. In the past the Prinsendam had had to cancel calling at Gozo several times but this time we were lucky.  Everybody could go ashore to see Gozo while the sun was shining and temperatures hovered around the 16oC / 61oF. Not warm but perfect for sightseeing.

Because there is not much lee around Gozo it is very hard to call at Gozo with a cruise ship. Unless you fit inside the port but then you have to be the same size or smaller than the ferries and they are not very big to start with. The sides of the island are quite steep and the wind not only blows over the island, the steep cliffs can also guide that same wind around the island if it has enough momentum to start with. Today with a wind force 4 to 5 it was not too bad and we could stay. Otherwise the only solution is to go to Valetta and to run a tour from there and use those ferries. We could count ourselves very lucky.

The red “bean” on the chart screen are all the positions plotted during the day while the ship moved to and fro behind the anchor chain.

Because of the strong winds the Prinsendam behaved like a restless horse on a long tether. The captain had run out 8 lengths (out of a maximum of 11) of anchor chain and thus with over 200 meters of chain on the sea bottom we were safely at anchor. But while the weight prevented the anchor from dragging, it gave enough room for having the ship yawn behind it considerably. So for the duration of our call, both the cabins on the portside and those on the starboard side got a very good view of Gozo harbor while the Prinsendam swing like a pendulum behind the anchor chain.

Churches are always handy. Here we have one which is positioned perfectly to guide the tender safely into the port.

I did not go ashore as I had a ships articles review to do but what stands out in my mind from the last visit there was the number of churches for such a small island and the wild nature on the west side. Wikipedia just taught me that there are 46 of those churches scattered around the island and that for a population of 37,000 is quite a high per diem. Lots of things to see if you are into church buildings.

Most of our guests went on tour but several went for the hop on – hop off Bus that marvellous invention has also reached Gozo. I am a big fan of it and luckily they can be found in more and more ports and towns.  It works much better than haggling with a local cab driver and you have a much better view. There is talk about building a bridge between Gozo and Malta or maybe even a tunnel but it will be an expensive affair and there will be a big political battle to see if the money is worth it and if the Government can afford it. Malta is not that big, that is has surplus billions lying around to play with.

Because Gozo is so close to Valetta on Malta we are having two ports calls in one day. As soon as the last tender was back and the anchor was raised, we sailed between Gozo and the West point of Malta to the North East and then approached Valletta from the North. This port has been designated one of our overnight ports and that gives the option to do a barbeque on deck. Theme this time is Mongolian night.

We sailed into the port just before sunset. That is not the best time as the setting sun only lights up the buildings to the East near the dry-dock area. In the morning with the sun in the East, the ship sails with the sun and then the higher part of Valletta with all the fortifications form an impressive sight to behold.

Still sailing into Valetta still beats a large number of other ports, where there is simply………….. nothing to see. Thus we will be here until tomorrow evening and the weather looks good. Little change, in other words, perfect sightseeing weather.

And thus the good ship Prinsendam sailed on a south easterly course from Barcelona towards Malta. In command is Captain Tim Roberts who was one of the captains who came over from Windstar Cruises when it was still a subsidiary of Holland America Line. He has remained with us ever since. Today the most puzzling part was the weather. It was wind still in Barcelona and then in the late evening it breezed up while we sailed north of the Balearic Islands. Once passed, the wind died down again but late this morning when coming in the vicinity of Sardinia it started to blow again. And not just a little bit, there is a stiff breeze blowing out there, which has whipped up the waves sufficiently for the ship to be moving about a bit. Not bad weather but wobbly and thus quite a few of our guests are not happy campers.  Tonight we will come in the lee of Sicily and hopefully the wind and waves will die down a little bit.   

Our route from Barcelona to Gozo.

That is certainly hoped for as the anchorage at Mgarr on Gozo is not the most sheltered in the world. At the moment the wind is blowing from the right direction and that means that the island will act as a wind catcher and thus provide a good anchorage in its lee side. If that is the case then we have to see what the swell is doing at the anchorage. If it follows the wind completely then we are in good shape. If it decides to curve around the island than we might have some challenges. We just have to wait and see. Sailing on the Prinsendam is always a happening as the ship goes to places where other ships do not or cannot go. Gozo is a beautiful island with a rich history but it is not big enough to let 1000’s of cruise guests run around. The infrastructure is not ready for it and there is a distinctive lack of shops to keep the majority of those 1000’s happy. Gozo is all about culture. Even the souvenirs which you might want to buy (table cloths with lace fringes etc.) are more about buying culture than anything else.

As Malta & Gozo are very strategically placed between Africa and Europe it has always been in the middle of wars, invasions and all sorts of other mayhem which brought the local population a lot of grief but which also has resulted in a very rich cultural history. Romans, Arabs, Knight Templars, British Colonials, Invading Germans etc. etc. they all have been there and left their marks, good or bad, but definitely fascinating. So much that my wife and I went back there 2 years ago, for a week to see the islands properly and as you cannot do justice to it all with just a quick cruise ship visit. Plenty of museums to visit and I had only one complaint the island has a definite lack of 2^nd hand book stores. It saved me money but I had hoped for better.

Navigation wise this is not such a busy area. There is a flow between the Straits of Gibraltar towards the Suez Canal but most of the shipping traffic veers north on the East side of Sicily and goes through the straits of Messina towards the Italian and French ports in the North West of the Med.  The only thing which can be a hindrance here are large numbers of fishing boats but with the strong wind blowing outside I do not think that the navigators will have an issue tonight. Any self-respecting fisherman, who wants to live to see his grandchildren, is staying in port tonight.

For the time being this is the closest which a HAL ship will come to Tunisia. The company has wisely decided not to call here anymore until it has reviewed the situation in regards to the safety of our guests. Although no acts of violence have been brought directly again cruise ship guests, the latest flare up at the Museum in Tunis did involve guests from two cruise ships and that is something we cannot have of course.  Hopefully we will be able to go back there one day as it is a great country with much to offer but we have to wait and see.

Thus tomorrow morning we will arrive at Mgarr roads on the East side of the island of Gozo and if the weather Gods favors us we can have a good day ashore here.  The weather forecasts calls for a sunny day with temperatures of 16oC or 61oF. Perfect for sightseeing. Now we just have to wait and see what the wind and waves are going to do.

The Prinsendam in April 2014. (Courtesy an unknown but very good photographer)

After a few rather unusual days I boarded the ms Prinsendam yesterday in Barcelona. It had been the plan to go home for 4 days when leaving the Noordam on the 30^th. of March. However just before walking off the gangway I was asked by my colleague to stay on board, so he could go home to attend to a medical emergency in his family. Emergency’s always override personal plans so I suddenly found myself at the helm of the ms Noordam while the head office was phoning around to find a replacement. Luckily this turned out not to be so difficult and in the first port of call Philipsburg St. Maarten, three days later,  I could hand over and leave from there.  As a result I spent two nights and one day at home before flying out to the Prinsendam. Just home long enough to do the laundry and the ironing and with a disappointed wife (normally referred as Senior Management) who had hoped to have had my undivided attention for a few more days. Luckily she is an old salt as well and understands that helping out a colleague in an emergency overrides everything.  In the mean time I have heard that the emergency was not fatal so we can all be happy about that.

Now I start a 3 week period on the Prinsendam with trainings, reviews and other sorts of mayhem that accompanies me when I pop up somewhere. Senior Management is joining me for 10 days between Heraklion and Istanbul and hopefully I will be able to post some reports about the tours in the various ports.  Although Lesley has been at sea for a very long time, there are still places she has not been to or did not see properly.

The Prinsendam is on a 55 day Grand Voyage, and has just finished the crossing and is now commencing the “port hopping” part of the voyage. Barcelona is a change – over port for those who only booked a segment and thus the ship stays here on the 5^th. and the 6^th. It enabled me to go straight from the airport to the ship avoiding a stay in a hotel room somewhere.  Tomorrow we are a day at sea and then we will visit Mgarr on Gozo which is the smaller island West of Malta. The day after we will be in Malta itself with a visit to Valetta. Then another sea day, before arriving in Heraklion as the Dutch say or Iraklion which seems to be the more Greek spelling. From there it is to Israel and then to Turkey.

Israel is going to be interesting as we will be there during the Greek Orthodox Easter. The West has just finished this but the Orthodox Church is using another Calender which means it is Easter in Jerusalem twice. It might be rather busy and chaotic when the ship tours get there.

At the moment we are blessed with extremely good (sunny, cool and nearly wind still) weather in the area around Barcelona and that means that we should have a nice and quiet crossing to Malta. Although a lot of people do not realize it, the Med is a big sea and it can be very boisterous. Plus swell can build up over shallow waters and build up to very high waves. 30 feet and higher are observed on a regular basis during the winter season.

I spent the day today walking around the ship saying hello to a lot of officers and crew I sailed with in the past and re familiarize myself with the Prinsendam again. I was captain here from 2008 to 2012 so I know the ship inside out, but you forget things and also the company keeps tinkering with the ship.  In 2010 they built extra cabins, in 2013 they added a covered Lido deck and also inside they have been making small changes to make sure that the Prinsendam could follow modern trends as best as possible.

For a small and older ship not everything can be achieved but then that this not always necessary either. The ship is the “Elegant Explorer” and that can be achieved without having a rock climbing wall, 10 restaurants or a Jacuzzi around every corner.  (Although we do have a few of those ……….. on board)

Tomorrow real life will start again and I will be trying to find out how many new crew there are on board and how much they are familiar with all the company rules, regulations and operational procedures.

Today we sailed on a slightly NNW course towards the Windward Passage the gap between Cuba and Haiti on Hispaniola. This means that during this course we sailed south along the East side of Hispaniola and then north on the West side. A sort of circumnavigation of the island with a very wide turn. The area under Hispaniola now looks again as it used to, very windy, but not too much swell as the angle of the Trade Wind is half over the island and that reduces the free wind surface needed  to whip up the waves in height.

This was a thing I used to my advantage during my first year as Captain on the old Noordam. Learning how to use this to my advantage. No open water around, no swell or waves rolling in. Being used to not being able to operate a tender service in ports when the winds were stronger than force 5 or 6 because of the generated swell causing too much chop at the tender platform. Then I came to Greece. Here the Etesian winds from the North can easily blow 35 to 45 knots at times and I found out if I anchored close enough to the shore then the wind might be ferocious but there was not enough distance for the waves to build up. At the same time that strong wind would keep the ship away from drifting onto the shore.

The harbour of Pythagorion by night. We parked our tenders right in the middle of the town.

The best example was Pythagorion on the island of Samos. When I arrived it was blowing a severe gale but coming closer to the breakwater of the port the flatter the water went. In the end I dropped two anchors about half a ships length from the breakwater and ran a perfect tender service for the day. The tenders docked straight onto the little boulevard with rows and rows of Taverna’s right across the street. Tendering during a full gale and the guests really did not notice it. We stayed until 11 pm. and while normally Guests all return for dinner on board, that evening we had a really hard time of getting them out of those taverna’s and back on board. The little town was in the shade of the mountains and there was hardly any wind blowing through the town so everybody could sit comfortably ashore. Sitting in Greece under starry night with a good glass of wine looking at a fairy tale lighted ship was Paradise revisited and nobody wanted to return. If I remember rightly we had 3 tenders lined up at 22.30 in the evening to get everybody back on board at the same time.

Through all the years this was for some reason a call which I have never forgotten.  We only called there a few times and later not at all anymore. I wonder if it has changed much. Most cruise ships call at Kusidasi just around the corner which attracts more people due to the tours to Ephesus.

Greece is far away from the Caribe, although I will be there again in the very near future. The training class for new officers is coming to an end here on board the Noordam. For three weeks they have been listening to the HAL gospel as preached by me. They have been suffering under a assignment dreamed up by nasty me and been exposed to training drills they had never dreamt about by an even nastier me.  Tomorrow is the final day with presentations; handing out certificates and finishing off with a farewell dinner. Then some of them will fly home, waiting for their first assignment. Two of them already have their assignment, here on the Noordam and can simply stay on.

I will fly home for a few days, and on the 5^th. of April join the Prinsendam for 3 weeks in the Mediterranean which will include several Greek ports.  As the Prinsendam normally does some unusual ports there will no doubt some items of interest to highlight. My blog will be silent until the 6^th. when the Prinsendam leaves Barcelona for travelling into the Med. All the way up to Istanbul.

Tomorrow will be our last day at sea, travelling to the old Bahama channel towards Fort Lauderdale. The guests on board have had a really warm and sunny cruise, so they should be very happy.

Weather forecast: there is a frontal system descending onto Cuba from the American East coast and that will cause cloudiness and a considerable drop in temperature.  Time to put the sun tan lotion away.

I will be back in a week.

Guests do not always understand why we sail early from one port while the next one is just around the corner; and why we stay longer in another port while the next port is also nearby. Well it has to do with the design of a cruise. The company tries to create a multi experience event which the guests will appreciate and then come back for more. And thus we try to fit in on a longer cruise one evening in port for an on deck experience and the option to enjoy night life ashore. Willemstad on Curacao and Oranjestad on Aruba are such ports for the South West Caribbean and San Juan Puerto Rico is such a port for the East Caribbean. This port is most of the time followed by a call at St. Thomas which is just around the corner again.

Whatever time we leave the distance to the next port can be very short and then the ship just goes very slow to adjust for a scheduled arrival. Except this morning. We left at 11 pm. and shortly after the Captain was informed that a guest needed some special medication which was not on board. Then you can return but with Aruba just next door, you might as well speed up for a few hours and dock as soon as possible in your next port. It would take the same amount of time to return, then to continue, with the islands being so close together. Thus the Noordam docked this morning very early, while all the guests where still sleeping. The patient was taken care off in the proper way and the other guests were not inconvenienced by arriving late in the next port due to a medivac.

Our ships hospital is laid out as a regular small Emergency hospital and first aid unit as ashore. We have two doctors and two nurses on board and they can take care of all the incoming issues as would be the case at a regular A&E. On shore the patient who has a more complicated issue is then directly forwarded to a larger hospital where more specialized doctors are available. We cannot do that as easily on the ship and thus we have to carry out medical disembarks or Medi-vacs.   The medical team stabilizes the patient if the situation is serious and then the captain tries to find the nearest and most safe place to get the patient on the way to an appropriate hospital. Sometimes this is by helicopter, sometimes by boat and sometimes the ship sails into another port and simply docks there. Ambulance shows up, arranged by the local port agent, a ships side door opens and the patient is disembarked.

I took a few hours off yesterday as my trainees where busy with preparing a case study to present on their final day, this coming Sunday. They have been given a ships accident to investigate by producing a time line of the significant moments in the case and then point out where it went wrong, where it went right and if are there any lessons learned. Before that they had security training from our ships security officer and observed the gangway operation with the security guards.

The museum has three levels. One and two depict the development of Curacao and the sea trade and on the 3rd floor is a Royal Dutch Navy exhibition depicting that part of the islands history.

That gave me time to show around the people from the Maritime Museum in Willemstad. It is right opposite the fruit market I wrote about yesterday and very much worth while a visit.  I have asked the Curator if he could find out the answers to some questions which I have in relation to office presence of Holland America in Willemstad in the 2^nd world war and if there were any photos from the olden days showing HAL ships docked in port.  So we will see what comes up.

Today we are staying until 5 pm. as we need the time to get back to Fort Lauderdale on time by Monday. This stretch is a 19 knot run and that does not leave much room in the schedule in case there is adverse wind, swell or other issues which might impede the timely arrival. Saving a few minutes here and there soon mounts up and if you can get out at 16.45 instead of 17.00 hrs. then that is a nice bonus.

During the night and tomorrow we will cross the Caribbean Sea, heading for the East Side of Cuba and then sail through the Windward Passage to arrive north of Cuba.

Weather:  Sunny, but very windy and that means a wobbly sea until we get in the lee of Haiti late tomorrow.