Holland America Blog
Safety Officer
Holland America Blog Has Just Posted the Following:
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.* […]
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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.* […]
Click here to view the article.
