We are in perfect vacation weather. At times there is hardly a cloud in the sky, the sea is deep blue and the temperature is made pleasant by the wind on deck. That also makes it dangerous as with the breeze you do not feel the sun burning on your skin and then it goes wrong quickly. Hence the captain keeps hammering on ‘sunblock, sunblock” during the Voice from the Bridge. We will find out tomorrow how many did not listen. My experience is that there will be quite a few. Some because they do not listen or believe anything, some because they know what they can take at home and do not realize that the sun is slightly different in intensity over here than at home. And to my utter amazement they are not always first time cruisers. Today I also found out that we have a beach on board. I do not know where, but through the corridor marched this morning a child of 3 or 4 with spade and bucket on his way to the beach. He is a day early, but that did not deter him, he was on his way. Tomorrow we are in St. Maarten and there is even a nice beach next to the dock so he will not have to go far. Continue reading
Category: Caribbean (page 6 of 13)
It took most of the night to get out of the frontal system but by this morning we had a blue sky and a sunny sky. Sun taking over from the miserable grey day on departure. And a very breezy departure it was as the middle of the frontal system was just laying over Port Everglades when it was time for the cruise ships to sail. The Veendam used two tugboats as the wind went well over the 26 knots that she can handle on the thrusters but also because she was docked nose in and thus had to swing around in the basin and that would have made it all very marginal. The Koningsdam has much more power and she did not have to turn. Only had to make a 90o turn to starboard. Plus she had the advantage that if the wind would get too strong then it would always be possible to make a soft landing against pier 24/23. So we sailed without tugboats and even with the wind breezing up to 35 knots on occasion the captain could easily hold the ship in the middle of the fairway. Continue reading
As is not unusual with the hurricane season coming to an end there are still tropical storms forming in the North Atlantic Ocean just above the Caribbean Sea. They are not strong enough anymore to reach hurricane status and they also do not reach the Caribbean Islands. They normally turn north and then follow the Gulf Stream to Europe where on occasion they create havoc in England where it is then realized that the even a country where it rains a lot is not always ready for a wet present from the Caribbean Hemisphere. What it does do here locally is not “enhance” the Trade Wind. In a simple way I always explain it as “a tropical storm development will suck the wind strength out of the Caribbean”. The weather guru’s will have a very technical explanation for this with moving high and low pressure areas but the end result is the same. The Trade Winds reduce in strength. And that is very nice as it means that instead of having 25 to 35 knots of wind on the portside hull and balconies, it was now barely 20 and thus in port barely 10 to 15 knots as the island creates some lee for the harbor. Continue reading
Normally we spend two days at sea to get to the Dutch ABC islands but you can do it in a shorter period, if you leave on time from Half Moon Cay and keep the pedal to the metal. This means for us about 19 knots and will result in an arrival time of around noon time tomorrow at the Oranjestad pilot station, and then we will be docked about 30 minutes later. ABC islands, stand for Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao the three Dutch islands of the Venezuelan coast. (There is also a Klein (=s mall) Curacao and Klein Bonaire but those are two very small islands and are not in inhabited. The 3 islands form part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands but each has a different arrangement with the mother land. While Aruba is only nominally connected with the Netherlands, Curacao is somewhere in between and Bonaire is still very closely aligned. But they run most of their affairs independently and there is no completely free travel / option to live everywhere. If that would happen that there would be a fair chance that a lot of the islanders would come to Holland as there is more and higher paid work there and a lot of retired Dutch people would settle down permanently on the islands turning it into a big retirement village with no doubt a large hospital as well. So the economies are kept sort of separated and that is much better for the future of the islands. Continue reading
We were the first regular HAL ship that is calling at Half Moon Cay this year. This does not mean that no other ships have been here, or will be, but each company has its own routines and we apply our routines rigorously also to island practices. So today was the first time all HMC facilities were run through their paces in accordance with HAL standards. Tomorrow the Carnival Magic is visiting the island but they do their own thing. (And I have no idea what that is, apart from they use all the facilities as well). Ships from other brands of the Carnival Corporation can use the island as long as they do not send a ship while we are there. Thus tomorrow Carnival Cruise Lines can visit and apart from our island, they also use Princess Cays on occasion. Carnival does not have its own private island but the borrowing system works quite well as the cruise schedules are inter checked with all the brands to ensure that there are no bottle necks anywhere caused by ourselves. What the other companies such as RCI and NCL are doing is be doing is beyond our control so clogged up ports are still possible but the Corporation tries to avoid it. Continue reading
Well the amount of wind amounted was less than the weather guru’s had predicted and the good ship Volendam arrived without any hassle at 05.30 at the pilot station. Some ships have a dedicated pilot break but on cruise ships there are always several breaks (that is what we call the shell doors in the hull side that can be used as they are on the lowest deck). For the Volendam that is A deck as B deck is below the water line and Main deck is passenger accommodation. There we have the Tender break, the Water break, the Bunker break, the Marshalling area (2 doors), the Provision break, and another Water break. So plenty of choice but we normally use the Marshalling area, there were we load the suitcases and store the spare parts coming on board, as this break has the most space. And it is exactly amidships, so it has a flat hull and no bow wave playing around it. Continue reading
With the sedate speed of 15 knots are we sailing through the Caribbean Sea. The weather is following the weather forecast and that is appreciated by everybody. We expect that the Trade Wind will start to re-establish itself this evening and through out the night and with it the swell. But by tomorrow morning 05.30 we will be slipping inside the entrance of Boca Chica, the large inland water area where at the far North East the port of Cartagena is located. As explained in previous blogs, it takes about 90 minutes from pilot to gangway out and thus the captain is aiming to have the pilot on board at 05.30 hrs. The ships average speed has been set up for this as arriving earlier has not much use. If we put the pedal to the metal we could be there my midnight but what then. Continue reading
This current wind is our friend. It came from the north and was thus a following wind and then fell away (shielded by) when we entered the Windward Passage with Cuba to the West and Haiti on Hispaniola to the East. Then it turned to the north but only with a low velocity blowing against us. All due to that large frontal system that came through in the last few days and as a sort of Vacuum cleaner emptied the whole area out of wind. Well not emptied out, it balanced out the difference in High pressure and Low pressure here. Now the Trade Wind system has to re-establish itself and then we will be back to normal. The normal will be Easterly winds four 4 to 5 beaufort but here we still have this near wind still weather (which also means less whipped up waves) and that is something to enjoy and cherish while it lasts. Continue reading
So we were hopeful that the whole weather system that had been raining over Ft. Lauderdale and whose tail creating wind in the Bahamas would be gone by the time we arrived. And indeed 90% was gone as the wind had died down and there was only an overcast sky left. Those clouds sometimes carry wind but today the skies looked quite benign and there was no cloud formation that indicated any menace. And it worked out quite nicely. It took all day for the “silence after the storm” to move over.
When I was on the Zuiderdam I blogged about the ships movement when going from Aruba to Cartagena and from Cartagena to Panama. The strong Trade Wind pushing in the back and the subsequent waves & swell caused a corkscrew motion of the ship. All with the stabilizers doing their best but limited in their success. On this run we are going the other way. So we do not have following seas which catch the square stern and lift it up; now the sea movement hits the pointy bow and lifts it up. The result in a similar movement but at the same time different. Continue reading
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