Holland America Blog
Safety Officer
Holland America Blog Has Just Posted the Following:
The weather forecast was right and it was a wonderful morning to arrive and to sail into the Volcano. Yesterday it was windy and tomorrow it will be windy again but today it was wind still.* Which helped the ships operation immensely as the only anchor spot in the area was allocated to another ship. This cruise ship the Celestial Crystal calls here much more regularly than we ever will and thus gets the better spot. But no wind means, no drifting and indeed the Prinsendam could float serenely in front of the main town. Today was also the Kings Birthday in the Netherlands. It used to be April 30 when we had Queen Beatrix, who kept the National Holiday on her mother’s birthday (Queen Juliana) but when King Willem Alexander ascended to the throne he moved it to his own, 3 days earlier. On the ships we have tradition of Dressing Overall (or: Van Top Vlaggen in Dutch) This means more Dutch flags on display and the regular dressing flags out, which we normally only use during Embarkation day. So being the Teacher that I am, I went around with the sailor to ensure that protocol was followed. The main fuss is always to ensure that we do not put a larger Nation flag up, then the flag of the country (Greece) which we are visiting bigger. That would not be polite and respectful. When not docked we normally do not fly a flag from the stern but today was a National Holiday and thus we got a new flag out of the locker. Before we could go to Thira we first had to stop at 0’Athinai to send away the overland tour.* *We have a tour going from here which travel by coach over the part of the island to the east which you cannot see from the ship as it on the East slope of the Volcano rim. The tour then rejoins the ship at the main stop of the Santorini call which is a town called Thira (or Fira). Thus we entered from the West as […]
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The weather forecast was right and it was a wonderful morning to arrive and to sail into the Volcano. Yesterday it was windy and tomorrow it will be windy again but today it was wind still.* Which helped the ships operation immensely as the only anchor spot in the area was allocated to another ship. This cruise ship the Celestial Crystal calls here much more regularly than we ever will and thus gets the better spot. But no wind means, no drifting and indeed the Prinsendam could float serenely in front of the main town. Today was also the Kings Birthday in the Netherlands. It used to be April 30 when we had Queen Beatrix, who kept the National Holiday on her mother’s birthday (Queen Juliana) but when King Willem Alexander ascended to the throne he moved it to his own, 3 days earlier. On the ships we have tradition of Dressing Overall (or: Van Top Vlaggen in Dutch) This means more Dutch flags on display and the regular dressing flags out, which we normally only use during Embarkation day. So being the Teacher that I am, I went around with the sailor to ensure that protocol was followed. The main fuss is always to ensure that we do not put a larger Nation flag up, then the flag of the country (Greece) which we are visiting bigger. That would not be polite and respectful. When not docked we normally do not fly a flag from the stern but today was a National Holiday and thus we got a new flag out of the locker. Before we could go to Thira we first had to stop at 0’Athinai to send away the overland tour.* *We have a tour going from here which travel by coach over the part of the island to the east which you cannot see from the ship as it on the East slope of the Volcano rim. The tour then rejoins the ship at the main stop of the Santorini call which is a town called Thira (or Fira). Thus we entered from the West as […]
Click here to view the article.
