The Gulf Stream was indeed very strong and with an additional 3 knots in the back we were pushed towards the pilot station of Fort Lauderdale. The pilot station was all excited as the Zuiderdam scheduled for 0600 was behind us, instead of ahead of us. With both ships belonging to one company that does…   read more of “30 March 2012; Port…”

 It has been very windy in the Caribbean Sea during the last few weeks and as a result the currents were much stronger than usual. That gave us a nice push in the back yesterday when we were mid Caribbean and last night a strong push against us when we were going through the Windward Passage….   read more of “29 March 2012; At…”

 Today we had our first sea day after two hectic days and that gave the crew the chance to settle back into the normal routine of offering “HAL Life” on board. We have quite a few sea days on this cruise but it is always amazing the amount of items that are scheduled for the…   read more of “28 March 2012; At…”

Today everything worked like clockwork. Port Control and Pilots were in agreement about our arrival time and all other traffic was told to hold off until the good ship Statendam had duly entered Cartagena Bay.  The pilot hopped on board exactly on time and 5 minutes later we were sailing through the Boca Chico entrance….   read more of “27 March 2012;…”

I am now going through the Canal for 32 years, as long as I have been at sea and it never ceases to amaze me. I am always impressed by the sheer significance of it all but also by the fact that it is never the same. There is always something happening, something that is…   read more of “26 March 2012;…”

Thus we spent our 2nd day at sea, sailing along the coast of Costa Rica and Panama. Because Panama is located in this curve of the continent it is a distance of 80 miles into the Bay of Panama from the moment you come around the SW corner of the country. We saw an increase…   read more of “25 March 2012;…”

It is a distance of 879 nautical miles (0r 1011 land miles or 1628 km) to Amador from Puerto Quetzal. That makes a timely departure necessary and then all the way we have to keep up the speed to ensure that we arrive on time for the evening tours in Panama. On the way we…   read more of “24 March 2012; At…”

It was an early morning and it looked like it that we were the only ones awake in the port. As a matter of fact we probably were, as we could not get any answer out of Port Control. So we called, yelled and screamed for over an hour on the various VHF channels but…   read more of “23 March 2012;…”