And so I made the transition from Veendam to Eurodam. The Eurodam is a Sunday ship and thus I had to spend a night in a hotel in Ft. Lauderdale and then return to the port to find the Eurodam and the Koningsdam waiting. (…………….and two Celebrity ships and two Princess ships and the Allure of the Seas = busy day in port)

The route for this cruise. As the weather is so nice, the captain is taking advantage of the shorter route North of the Bahamas, instead of going against the current via the Old Bahama Channel, just north of Cuba.

The ms Eurodam is currently on 7 day cruises and alternating between two different routes. This week we are doing Ft. Lauderdale – Amber Cove – San Juan – Philipsburg – Half Moon Cay – Ft. Lauderdale. Then next cruise we make a grand circle around Cuba, calling at ports North, East, South and West of the Island. It will be interesting to see how San Juan has recovered from the Hurricane devastation of last year as I have not been there since.

The good ship Eurodam is in the capable hands of Captain Eric Barhorst who is one of our newer captains but who has been with Holland America for a long time already. As a matter of fact he has never sailed for another company ever since he was a cadet. In the 90’s Holland America had a period where we had to get captains in from outside as we did not have enough Captain’s licenses among the senior officers. Pilotage in both England and Holland was pulling greatly and any officers with plans to start a family, might not be eager to leave Holland America but were certainly eager to spend more time at home. And thus we had a number of captains and staff captains who came in sideways and as they liked the company, they stayed. Now my generation is slowly leaving the fleet, the next wave is coming up, and now all the senior officers are coming up through the ranks again.

The Eurodam is one of the two ships of the Signature Class, the Nieuw Amsterdam being the other one. They are both an evolution of the Vista Class ships, sharing the same hull but with a slightly different layout and an extra restaurant, the Tamarind, on the top. That novelty was first explored with the Arcadia or the 5^th. Vista Class which was handed over to P&O as it was decided that a 4 ship class worked better.  For that ship they had a bit more time to review its layout and when the guests kept asking for more food options (It is amazing that similar company’s get similar requests/demands/complaints) and they put their own specialty restaurant there the Sindhu. P&O is English and they have a very close historical connection with India, hence Indian food. As we have a very close historical connection with Indonesia, Holland America put an Indonesian, Thai, Japanese fusion restaurant there and we call it the Tamarind.

A tamarind Tree. At least that is what the internet says. If it is not, then I lie in ommission as I can barely differentiate between an Oak tree and a Fir tree.

A Tamarind is a tree, of African origin, which is kept as an ornamental tree but its fruits / nuts, can also deliver a brown paste which is used to season Indonesian and Thai cooking. When I grew up in the Netherlands my neighborhood was full of people who had worked in the Dutch East Indies and had left Indonesia when it became independent; the stories were always about gathering in the evening under the Tamarind tree of the village to exchange the latest news. The Tamarind tree is quite dense and provides a good shade.

To get to Amber Cove, we are sailing above the Bahamas Bank today and then this evening we pass the Turks and Caicos Islands and then cross the end of the Old Bahama Channel to arrive at Amber Cove tomorrow morning at 07.00 hrs. at the pilot station. Amber Cove is located on the north side of the Dominican Republic in a sort of sheltered bay. I say sort of as it depends a little bit on the angle of the North Atlantic waves coming in. At the moment, the ocean outside is a smooth as a mirror as there is hardly any wind and that ocean would have been flat if it was not for the ever present swell but even that is low.

Weather Forecast for tomorrow: warm to very warm. 88oF/31oC. The Trade Wind is blowing at its regular strength but there are hills in the way and that will reduce the breeze in the port considerably. A lot of guests were talking about going snorkeling and that might be  a good idea. The temperature of the water is expected to be 25oC or 77oF.

It always gives a captain  a wonderful feeling if the weather is following the weather forecast. It makes you look less of a fool than they guests might otherwise think that you might be. Although we do not mind to be wrong if we predict bad weather and the bad weather does not happen but an accurate prediction during the Voice from the Bridge followed by Mother Nature confirming it can make your day. And now we have the weather doing exactly that. We had the wind from the wrong side yesterday but it kept the clouds away and brought a sunny day and the prediction was that the wind would veer to the north and then to the east. This would happen because of a frontal system coming through that was being pushed away by the Trade Winds. Frontal systems bring rain and this morning between 0900 and 1100 hrs. we had thunder and lightning and rain showers and then the wind indeed changed to the east and all was well in the world. By early afternoon we were back to partly sunny or partly cloudy, whatever you make of it. I think it was partly cloudy as there was still more cloud and blue sky but the sun was out again.

Captain Pieter Bant.

I do not really have to worry about the weather, although I do as it comes natural after so many years at sea, as the real worrying should be done by the ship’s captain. And we have a new one. Captain Colm Ryan went on leave in Ft. Lauderdale and his replacement is Captain Pieter Bant.

He is one of our newer captains but I have known him for a very long time. He will remain on the Veendam for a regular contract and then Captain Ryan will return. Captain Bant replaces Captain Noel O’Drisscoll who is transferring to the Koningsdam as he wanted to have a go at all the new gadgets, which the Veendam does not have.

We have a whole musical “captain” chair happening again due to the introduction of the Nieuw Statendam in December, the retirement of Captain Peter Bos and the passing away of a Seabourn Captain, which caused one of our captains to go over and to take his place.

Although we like a steady Trade Wind in this area as it brings predictable and nice weather; the wrong wind yesterday had one advantage, it gave less adverse current and no adverse wind. Normally we have to push against the Antilles current here (A sort of Northerly brother of the Gulf Stream) but this current gets a lot of its momentum from the Trade Winds which help with pushing the surface water to the North West at a faster rate. When the wind stops, then that momentum reduces somewhat and we notice that in the speed the ship makes. No adverse winds and less opposing currents can quickly give 0.5 knot less friction and 0.5 knots in 24 hrs. is 12 miles and that is with our average speed about 50 minutes of free sailing. The Chief Engineer was smiling today as it helps to stay inside the fuel budget.

Sailing through the Virgin Passage about 2 am. in the morning.

This evening we make landfall at Puerto Rico and then tonight we will sail through the Virgin Passage which separates Puerto Rico from the US Virgin Islands. From there we will approach Charlotte Amalie from the West as it is located on the south side of the island in a natural bay. Tomorrow there are only two ships in port and both ships have been assigned to dock at WICO, which is the main pier and the original port of St. Thomas. There is a 2^nd cruise berth location in Crown Bay which is used when “downtown” read the WICO pier is full. (West Indian Company) Holland America used to dock there a lot but lately they are sending the very big ones there as it is easier from them to get in and out of.

This was WICO pier in the old days before the cruise ships came and the pier was upgraded step by step. Tomorrow we will see what has changed.

The other ship is the Silver Wind which is much smaller than the Veendam and as the dock can take 3 mega liners, we will have plenty of room to park ourselves somewhere nice. Where ever we park, there will be plenty of shops to choose from as the whole Havensight area is one big shopping Mall. For the guests it might be positive to have only two smaller ships in as there seems to be a correlation between the height of the price and the number of cruise passengers ashore.  I might have a quick look to see if they have re-opened the book shop on the pier as it was closed last year, although book prices do not go up and down with the number of ships coming in.  We will be at the pilot station at 07.00 hrs. and should be docked at Havensight 45 minutes later.

Weather for Tomorrow: Partly Cloudy with a regular Trade Wind Breeze and 27oC / 80oF. It should be a good and normal Caribbean day.

And indeed the HAL parade took place; Veendam followed by Koningsdam, followed by tankers and other cargo ships. We all went to our regular docks and by 07.00 hrs. everything was in full swing. Another nice thing about having only two cruise ships in port is that the immigration procedures go so much faster. There are more CBP officers available to process each ship as the number of them is finite and 16 divided by 2 gives better processing power than 16 divided by 4 ships. As a result I could walk off and back on again just after 09.30 to get my weekly stamp. The authorities are always very eager to see me and to make sure, if I am still l there and if I still have a valid visa. So I did my little bit to help to achieve the zero count which means that everybody has disembarked or in case of the CVG guests (Collector Voyages Guests) have paraded off and back on again. (If they did not go ashore of course)

The view in Fort Lauderdale is at dock 21 not really exciting. They have demolished the old terminal 24 and 25  and a new one is under construction. For those whose memory gos back a long time, in the 80’s there used to be a nice restaurant at the end of this pier called Bert and Jack.

I just realized by talking to a guest today that there are a lot of guests out there who do not have much of an idea of what goes on during the Passenger Boat Drill just before departure. They are told to wait until the 2^nd alarm goes, then go to the cabin, wait for the 3^rd alarm and then go to deck. And there wait for further developments.  But what goes on behind the scenes is another matter and a lot goes on behind the scenes. We have three alarms, to make it easier for everybody in case of an emergency.  The law requires that everybody gets into the lifeboat and with the lifeboat into the water in 30 minutes.  That is not easy to do with a full house and with a complement of which not everybody is as agile as they once used to be.

So we have the first Alarm, the well-known fire alarm, which calls the fire teams and a number of support teams to stations. That normally solves all problems in a real emergency. Then we have a second alarm: the Crew Alert Alarm. Now all crew will start executing a function as things might be a bit more serious than just a local fire, or there is something else going on. We can use this alarm also for a search of suspicious packages or if somebody is missing. With this alarm we normally ask guests to go to their cabin and in that way all families are together or reunited again. In the mean time we have sweep teams go through the ship to find stragglers or confused people and on the outside decks the boats and rafts are prepared……. In case of.

Now if the captain then thinks that it might become very seriously, he sounds the General Emergency Alarm (the famous 7 short and 1 long blast alarm) and everybody who does not have a function, that are all the guests and some crew go to their lifeboat stations. If the lifeboats would have to go down now, then they are already ready and then we can comply with the 30 minute rule to get everybody away from the ship.

To support this organization, we have with Holland America three groups on the ships:

Command & Control: runs the Fire teams, the boat and raft lowering teams, Medical, the Evacuation Teams that control the whole operation. Captain is in charge.

Technical Control: The whole engine team to support the fire teams and the Chief Engineer takes the lead when there is a technical fire.

Muster Control: this is the Hotel Director with the front office staff and they lead the whole movement of all guests and crew during the various alarm stages. They also control the various groups that support this, such as Passenger Area sweep team, Crew Area sweep team, Passenger Assist Team (cabin stewards), Club Hal, Deck Clearing Team, Stairway Guides, Document Securing Team (collecting passports and money) and the Emergency Elevator Operator Team. They also monitor the full mustering of everybody. That is now done by I Pod scanning devices and the results can be followed on the computer.

This screen shows all the counts coming in.  In this case for crew liferafts but for the lifeboats it works the same. Green is complete and red still in progress. The round pie to the right, blue what is in and red what is still outstanding

With all the teams deployed, it is not possible for any guest or crew to go missing or to be left behind and everybody will survive an emergency. We drill this constantly and it is one of my focus points when I am on board to observe and test these groups so that they live up to the standards. I am not an auditor, because yes I point out omissions but I also solve them by giving guidance, training and having them go through the routine one more time. Normally it runs like clockwork, as it should, but with 569 crew on board,…………….. there is always one.

We are now going on an Eastern Caribbean Cruise, calling at St. Thomas, St. Barthelome, St. Lucia – Antigua – St. Croix –Half Moon Cay and then back to Ft. Lauderdale.

Weather: a bit of a mixed bag. At the moment the wind is blowing from the wrong direction due to this weather front up north. That will pull away and then the regular Trade Wind weather has to re-establish itself. We will see that on our 2^nd sea day when we will have rain and the wind will go from south west, to north to north east and then to east again. So by the time we arrive in St. Thomas the weather should be back to what it is supposed to be.

It is only short hop from sea buoy to sea buoy and thus the Veendam drifted around a little bit during the night and then made with great precision the exact pilot time of 06.15 in the morning. Getting into to port is a very short run, you hardly have time to speed up and then you have to put the brakes on again to make the turn to the cruise terminal on the western side of the harbor. The terminal is an original from the 1950’s and probably from even earlier, when the ships were not so large as nowadays and a regular size ocean liner would be about half the size of the Veendam.

Three terminals from the old days. The first one has been spruced up and listens to the beautiful name of Terminal Sierra Maestra San Franciso. (Sounds a lot better than Terminal B……) the 2nd cruise ship was the Berlin, sailing for the German market. she is a lot smaller and just fitted inside.

Thus we stuck out by about 30 meters, leaving the stern overhanging considerably and all the stern lines were running as spring lines thus leading forward. If we had had a strong North Easterly wind today we would have needed a tugboat to have kept the stern against the dock. The only other option would have been to have dropped the hook in the large inner harbor and have run a tender service or dock somewhere at a larger cargo terminal.  Tendering would not have been much fun as the water in the harbor has a very special fragrance and it is not one that you buy in little bottles.

A friendly guard in the maritime musem. She had family in Zeeland, the Netherlands and set me on course for the National Archives.

The ship is still gearing up for all my activities that I want to conduct here on board and while waiting for that I had time to run ashore. I had never been to Cuba nor has anybody else who has sailed for a long time with Holland America. From the good old days the port has three passenger terminals left over, two are in very bad state but the 3^rd one has been nicely restored into a regular cruise terminal complete with an embarkation terminal, Money exchange and souvenir shops. Wages are not that high in Cuba so no lack of man & woman power and I have never seen so many Customs people in place, doing both the passport checks and the security scanning. Funny thing is, they scan you going out and going in, so you can not take anything dangerous ashore but you also cannot to take it back. And after having walked through the sealed off Customs area, the ship scans everybody one more time. I have seldom felt so safe in my life. It almost looked like Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.

Downtown is not far, as a matter of fact the nose of the ship is in down town. It just depends which way you want to go. The whole old city is right in front of the terminal but the main museum area is a little bit to the west, closer to the sea and that was also my first focus point. I was heading for the Maritime Museum housed in a fort/ castle and called Castillo de la Real Fuerza. It was originally built to protect the harbor but then they realized that is was too far inland, so they had to build another one and made this one the Governors Mainson. (In the days that Cuba was Spanish.)

Three forms of transport in Havana. Those yellow eggs to the left are scooters which can take two passengers all over town. In the center the old American cars and a green Lada and to the far right, Horse and Cart sightseeing tours.

I wanted to find out if the museum had anything about Holland America but the collection is mainly focused on the days of the Gold and silver export from South America. A very nice lady told me that all the paperwork was most likely held at the National Library, just around the corner, so that was the next stop.  This was bit more complicated as what I wanted was a bit out of the routine of the Security (All ladies, in both Musea) but eventually a young lady on high heels introduced herself as the Curator of the uncatalogued collections and explained that she thought there were photos from the port from before (before meaning here before the revolution) but she had no idea what and she could not get at it. What a pity, I wished that all museum curators looked like her; then the reading rooms would be a lot fuller than they are now.

It gave me a good feeling, this natural way of trying to help. So I like the people here, friendly and warm; and Ladies if you go ashore here, keep your husbands on a short leash as the ladies are beautiful, there are lots of them, the dresses or jeans are very tight and it all jiggles in the right places. Even in the museums. Luckily I am happily married.

Modern Havana. High rises just off the coast line. The area with the tourists hotels starts right behind it.

Next stop, after a walk through the Old City, was Central Square, looking for the hop on hop off Bus. They have one but it is operated by a governmental travel agency and thus it has not the familiar red colors but its blue and it has a ticket stand inside the Bus. Then for the next 105 minutes (At $ 10 a person) the bus went all around the west side of the city. That is everything west of the old town. Apart from the main thru fare as you cannot get a big bus through the old streets but the route stayed away from the South East part leading towards the lower side of the inner harbor. Still it gave a very good impression of Havana. The wide boulevards which must have been very impressive in the old days, the run down Villa’s (although there is a lot of refurbishment and restauration going on) the communist new builds (some of them very colorful) the Colon Cemetery, very impressive if you are into that sort of thing and of course the Plaza de Revolution with a concrete pole in the middle, which you could see as a space rocket station if you did not know any better. A lot of guests took a tour around the city in one of the large number of old American cars, many of them convertibles and all in very good condition (at least on the outside), but I prefer  the open top bus as you sit higher and have a better overview.

This was the most suprising thing I saw. Right in downtown between the shops and restaurants a semi open air dress factory. The sales shop was right next door

My last stop was looking for 2^nd hand book stores as they normally also have post cards and other stuff. I had not planned this but I had time, and my wife can tell you that I have a homing-radar for bookshops, I do not even look for them, I just find them. And here in Havana there are plenty. Lots of revolutionary stuff, but also lots of Stuff from “before”.  Nothing of my interest but one store had some very nice French historical editions from late 19^th century and you can buy them but you cannot easily take them out of the country. The antiquarian explained that if I bought one of the older books, it might get confiscated in the terminal “for checking”. Even if it was a book about Napoleon.  He could have sold me the book and then have left me to deal with Customs but he was friendly and honest.  So I contributed some money as a thank you instead to a big red can with a picture of Che Guevara on it. No idea what it was for but it made the youngest daughter happy,  dressed in red skirt and necktie.

This is how Havana port looks like on the Radar / Electronic map. The ship is to scare and you see we overhang quite a bit.

The ms Veendam will stay until tomorrow morning 02.00 hrs. so the guests can enjoy the night life with all the live music in the restaurants, bars, and open squares. Then we will sail around Cuba heading to Cienfuegos on the Southside for the day after tomorrow. So tomorrow I will put a few things in the blog about Holland America History and Cuba.

Things are always exciting when you mess around with boats. The Panama Canal does it as well and thus we arrived an hour late at the Colon 2000 terminal and found a large line waiting to reboard the ship. But it was not everybody and then it turned out that for a number of reasons some of the tour buses came back quite late. The last tour guest was back with more than an hour’s delay. And that pushed the departure time of the Zuiderdam back considerably. So it was not until well past 21.30 that we departed, luckily with all the guests on board. We did not lose anybody in the interior of Panama.

As mentioned yesterday it is a tight schedule between Colon and Puerto Limon, even with an hour back, and on departure we already knew we could not make up the time. When possible the Captain tries to get out well before 8 pm. in Colon as every minute really counts. And then we just make it by the skin of our teeth to Puerto Limon. So we knew we did not stand a chance this time. Thus Plan a: Pedal to the Metal and Plan a-extra: stay longer. We might be docked one hour late so we will at least sail an hour late. Late arrival will normally have a knock-on effect on the tour departures and thus we might have to wait even longer.

And that turned out to be true. We had the gangway out just after 08.15 hrs. having arrived 1.5 hrs. late. About the same amount of time as we lost in Panama. To complicate matters, now our buses were not leaving as early as planned and that gave congestion at the tourist stops as the now the coaches of the Mein Schiff 6 were leaving at the same time. Mein Schiff 6 (a sister of Mein Schiff 5 and 4) is a bit bigger than the Zuiderdam and has a lot more guests on board. And thus generates a lot more tour guests. As a result the EXC manager already predicted that some buses might not be back until 5 pm. and thus the Captain decided to stay at least that one hour longer. And if the tours are not back then we will wait even longer. Next will be two sea days and that will give us enough lee way to make Fort Lauderdale on time. Important for the guests, as about 95% is going home (we have some back to back cruisers) and important for me, as I will be transferring ships and will move to the Veendam. And thus the blog is going to Cuba.

A wet and rainy pier between two apartment buildings both with a blue hull. In Puerto Limon it always seems to rain during our drills. Once the drills were over, we had glorious sunshine.

With the end of my time nearing here on board, I spent the morning assessing the General Drill, which each ship holds every 4 weeks, with smaller drills during the other week. I have been training, pushing and harassing the crew to get them at their peak performance for the coming audit and today was a sort of exam day. First the fire drill which I can do by myself and then all the officers fanned out all over the ship, to observe various areas, as by the 2^nd alarm we have all 800 crew on the move. And that continues until we have all the boats on the sea side safely into the water.  I was playing a nasty guest who did not want to go to the lifeboat station. We do not have them very often but sometimes it happens among those who are on board for multiple cruises and who are getting fed up to go to the boat drill each time a cruise starts.

We have search teams who comb out all the public rooms and cabins and when they find a guest, that person is urged to go to the cabin or to the Boat station. If that does not work, then somebody from the Front desk will show up to use all the people skills available to get some movement. If that does not work, then security show up and they normally do get some movement. At all times our objective is to ensure that we will save ALL souls if the ship goes down, even the nasty ones. So the nasty-me got saved as well although it did give all involved a good amount of stress to accomplish it.

But you do not make world champions without pain, without frustration and without disappointments and Holland America strives to be world champions in lifeboat drills. Although we hope we will never get a medal for it due to a real occurrence. And thus we train, train, test, exam, review and train again. Until the crew is dreaming about life jackets at night.

Tomorrow we start the first of two sea days and then we are in Fort Lauderdale. The weather is supposed to give us not too much wind and a chance of showers. So just have to see what we will get.