I had decided to go for a 0600 pilot to be ahead of the other cruise ships. It takes about 1 hour to get from the pilot station to the dock and that normally means that captains go for 1.5 hours before their official arrival time. One hour for the transit and 30 minutes up…   read more of “27 February 2010;…”

This was our second day at sea, to cover the distance of 1000 miles to get from Montevideo to Rio de Janeiro. The outside temperature is slowly climbing but it will not get very warm until we are passed Rio and are turning north along the coast again. At the eastern end of Brazil is…   read more of “26 February, 2010;…”

After our wobbly evening in the entrance of the Rio de la Plata we turned north just after 1 am and from then on we had following seas. The Prinsendam made a knot more extra speed courtesy of the wind blowing in the stern and apart from the occasionally pitching movement the ship was riding…   read more of “25 February 2010;…”

The weather system did come our way and it did start to blow during the early morning hours. By the time we reached the Montevideo pilot station the wind speed had freshened to 40 knots and gusting higher. By that time I was on my 3rd pilot for the night. We had the harbour pilot…   read more of “24 February 2010;…”

The weather improved dramatically during the night and I woke up to a very sunny and dry day. Very good weather indeed and it remained good until departure. Buenos Aires is a change over port and we had about 100 guests leaving and joining today. In Rio de Janeiro another 50 will change and then…   read more of “23 February 2010;…”

It is roughly 150 miles up river to Buenos Aires and with having to maintain a slow speed because of the squat it was all night affair to get there. The wind had some sort of funnel effect on the river and blew at times with over 40 miles an hour but it helped with…   read more of “22 February 2010;…”

Our second day at sea was sunny but very windy. However as it was a following wind it did not affect the situation for the ship very much. Most guests were busy in the ship anyway with their daily activities, or for about 150 of them, getting ready to go home. Both in Buenos Aires…   read more of “21 February 2010;…”

South America is a continent that is sharply tapered towards its south point with Cape Horn at the very end. That meant for us that when we sailed from the Falklands we could set a straight northerly course (002o) and that one course will bring us to the entrance of the Rio de la Plata….   read more of “20 February 2010;…”