Holland America Blog
Safety Officer
Holland America Blog Has Just Posted the Following:
We were lucky today. There was no wind. When the Prinsendam arrived at 07.00 hrs. in the morning there was just a small ripple on the water and that was just what we liked. As mentioned yesterday the dock is perpendicular to the prevailing wind, which comes all the way from the north and when it hits the Island, it even increases a bit more when it funnels down the mountain range. Many a time did a cruise ship have to abort docking as the wind simply blew it away. Then anchoring is always an option but Mykonos town is far to the south of the dock and the bay is large enough for the wind to whip up the waves. And that brings us to the discussion, do we dock or anchor? When we dock we need to use a 10 minute shuttle bus ride into town. **When we tender, we land our guests directly into down town, which is more convenient but for that they have to endure a very wobbly 10 minute tender ride. So what is wise?* 10 minutes in the bus or 10 minutes in the tender? For me it is simple I prefer to dock because at least I avoid the challenges with getting a lot of very mature guests safely in and out of a rocking tender. And today we could do that. We docked with no wind and even when we left there was not that much wind either. The pilot had been predicting South Wind force 6 but maybe that was in his back garden as we did not see it. *The pilot here comes on board more out of habit than out of necessity and this morning he hopped on board about 2 minutes before the ship docked.* There are no navigational challenges here in Mykonos, apart from the wind. So while the captain started his Master – Pilot Conference the Staff captain was already docking the ship. We only needed the advice from the Pilot to say exactly where he wanted us to park. *As the pier is also […]
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We were lucky today. There was no wind. When the Prinsendam arrived at 07.00 hrs. in the morning there was just a small ripple on the water and that was just what we liked. As mentioned yesterday the dock is perpendicular to the prevailing wind, which comes all the way from the north and when it hits the Island, it even increases a bit more when it funnels down the mountain range. Many a time did a cruise ship have to abort docking as the wind simply blew it away. Then anchoring is always an option but Mykonos town is far to the south of the dock and the bay is large enough for the wind to whip up the waves. And that brings us to the discussion, do we dock or anchor? When we dock we need to use a 10 minute shuttle bus ride into town. **When we tender, we land our guests directly into down town, which is more convenient but for that they have to endure a very wobbly 10 minute tender ride. So what is wise?* 10 minutes in the bus or 10 minutes in the tender? For me it is simple I prefer to dock because at least I avoid the challenges with getting a lot of very mature guests safely in and out of a rocking tender. And today we could do that. We docked with no wind and even when we left there was not that much wind either. The pilot had been predicting South Wind force 6 but maybe that was in his back garden as we did not see it. *The pilot here comes on board more out of habit than out of necessity and this morning he hopped on board about 2 minutes before the ship docked.* There are no navigational challenges here in Mykonos, apart from the wind. So while the captain started his Master – Pilot Conference the Staff captain was already docking the ship. We only needed the advice from the Pilot to say exactly where he wanted us to park. *As the pier is also […]
Click here to view the article.
