Captain Albert’s Weblog

Good morning,

Holland America has completed the transfer of all my blogs and historical stuff from Avidcruiser to the company website.

I can now be found at http://www.hollandamericablog.com/albert/

or via www.hollandamerica.com, clicking on the blog button. When the new page opens there is a Captain Albert button on the right hand site that leads to my new “house”

See you there

Captain Albert

As I announced in December; the plan was for me to leave the Avid Cruiser website and go completely in house with Holland America Line.

There were some technical difficulties with getting all the historical pages over, which you can view on the right hand side of my main blog page.

However during this weekend the Holland America blog people will move everything over to the HAL Blog site. So by Monday USA - Pacific morning time I should be fully operational from within the HAL site.

While the transfer takes place I will not be able to upload any blogs. This means that I will upload the 13, 14 and 15 of June blog on the 16th. I do not know yet if the www.Captainalbert.com link will still work after monday but I hope so.

In the mean time I would like to ask all my readers to look for my blog on the HAL website from Monday onwards, where it should look and function in the same way as you are currently used to.

Thank you for your continued interest.

Captain Albert.

Today a relaxing sea day. We are sailing along the Portuguese and Spanish coast towards our next port of call Hendaye, in France. This morning at 08.30 we passed Cape Finisterre and changed course to the East as we came North of Spain. The weather changed noticeably the moment we came around this Cape. Here currents come together and also the weather gets more under the influence of the North Atlantic. Thus, although the sun was shining, it was quite cool outside. However as there was no wind, it was a very pleasant day. While the guests had a nice relaxing day, this was of my busiest days as far as non navigational activities were concerned. Continue Reading »

I was raving about the weather yesterday but Lisbon decided to go one better and the sailing up the river was fantastic. We had a heavy swell running over the bar at the entrance of the river which made the ship pitch considerably for a short while but that was the only thing to mar a prefect arrival. There was a long ocean swell running from the N.E generated by some nasty and windy weather on the North Atlantic but in Lisbon it was wind still and sunny. Thus we happily trundled up the river while the sun rose over the city. While the sun rose we were treated to an un-expected spectacle, a green flash during sun rise. We see the green flash quite often during sunset in open waters, but this was the first time that we had one while entering port and over land and in the morning. Continue Reading »

While Northern Europe had strong winds with tornado watches and torrential rains with flood alerts, we had “to cope” with flat calm sea’s and sunny skies. So with that happy thought on our mind we approached the pilot station early in the morning as we had to be docked by 7 am. From the pilot to the dock normally takes about 35 minutes but docking took longer this time as we had been assigned another berth. Behind us was the Adventure of the Seas who with 340 meters of length was given our normal dock as it was much longer. Continue Reading »

As expected it was a beautiful day at sea while we sailed around the south side of Spain from Barcelona to Cadiz. This stretch of water is called the Alboran Sea after a small island that is located slap bang in the middle of it. As soon as we were out of Barcelona we “moved with the flow”; all the traffic going in the direction of Gibraltar is basically on the same track line and creates a sort of highway at sea. In the same way as you have a motorway on land, with the difference that there is no restriction in leaving, crossing or sitting still on a sea highway. Traffic going to the harbors in the Northern part of Spain, the Southern part of France and the Northern part of Italy are in the other lane a bit more to the south. On the radar you see 20 to 30 ships nicely separated by an invisible line going one way or the other. Continue Reading »

In the past we had to travel through a bridge to get to our dock at the World Trade Centre. I assume because everybody got fed up with having to wait for this bridge being open all the time, they decided to give the older port area its own entrance. When the new port area was under developed it did not matter that much as hardly anybody had to go over the bridge but when the cruises ships started to dock there, the waiting times became very inconvenient. Now the ferries and the smaller cruise ships, plus the fishery traffic and the traffic for the dry docks have their own entrance, relieving the pressure on the bridge considerably. Continue Reading »

The weather turned out to be beautiful indeed and that made approaching Marseilles very pleasant. The wind had died off completely and the sun was shining straight over the hills making the area look very “Mediterranean”. It was an active port day as far as traffic was concerned with the Prinsendam leading the parade. We were followed by the Coral (Lois Cruise Lines) The Costa Pacifica (Costa Cruises) and the Bleu de France (latest off-shoot of Royal Caribbean to get it into the French market). For the rest there was a whole line of ferries coming in as well about an hour later. Continue Reading »

I had really hoped that for this port it would be a wind still day as anchoring in La Spezia with wind would have been an unpleasant challenge. Well it was. La Spezia is a big cargo and navy port. There is no real cruise terminal or a half decent cargo dock available that could be used to dock a cruise ship. Thus the authorities have decided that cruise ships should anchor and tender directly to the boulevard of La Spezia. Not a bad idea in principle. Instead of needing a shuttle or paying for a taxi, the ships tender deposits all the sightseers directly in the nicest location. For that reason an anchorage is allocated that is nearest to the tender float and out of the way of other traffic. That works fine as long as there is no wind in the port. Continue Reading »

The pilots had a major shuffle with getting all the ships lined up properly. I had already seen yesterday that it was going to be a busy day, so I had brought my ETA (estimated Time of Arrival) forward to ensure that I would not be delayed because of others. The only uncertainty now were the ferries who have their own schedule and just come in when ever they arrive at the port entrance. By setting the pilot time for 05.30 I was at least ahead of all the other cruise ships except the Celebrity Solstice. That ship had come in at 3 am in the morning and in order to make that time it had to race from Naples to Civitavecchia going full out. Especially as she had left an hour after us from Naples. However for that ship it is a necessity to arrive very early. With 2850 guests onboard, it takes a while to off load the luggage. If each guest has at least 2 pieces of luggage then it means that over 5700 pieces have to be off loaded. We can do about 800 pieces in 2 hours and if they do double with two shore gangs then it still takes 3.5 hours for them to be finished on time before disembarkation starts. Continue Reading »