Welkom aan boord, Captain!

Blog Board member Frank de Vries just sent us this photo of Captain Jeroen van Donselaar stepping on board his new ship for the very first time. Captain van Donselaar joined Eurodam today in the yard. We’ll be posting his first impressions of the ship in the next week or so.

How do You Steer the Ship?

Eurodam’s wheel already is in place on the bridge

When you picture the ship’s wheel, do you imagine something along the lines of a giant wheel with spokes adorning its circumference to enable steering? Well, times have certainly changed, and though ships keep getting bigger and bigger, ship wheels of today are surprisingly small for the job they have to do. Yet despite their size, they still have the power to steer today’s megaships. To find out exactly how a ship is steered, we asked Eurodam’s Captain Jeroen van Donselaar for an explanation.

It is a common misconception that the captain steers the ship himself or is always on the bridge when the ship is at sea. The presence of the captain on the bridge is required when entering or leaving port, during reduced visibility, in heavy weather or dense traffic, and when circumstances so dictate.

The captain or the second in command — the chief officer — always maneuvers the ship alongside or off the berth, but this does not mean we are actually steering or are “at the helm” as we prefer to call it. This job is done by helmsmen who have the rank of quartermaster, which at Holland America Line is a position in between able-bodied sailor and boatswain. In pairs of two, these gentlemen assist the watch officer on the bridge on a four-hours-on, eight-off rotation. They are not licensed, but are qualified to act as helmsman and lookout, and to provide general assistance to the watch officer.

When at the helm, they take orders from me, the chief officer, the watch officer or a pilot, depending on who has what we call “the conn,” which means who is handling the ship at the time.

The orders given to the helmsmen can be course orders, such as “Steer zero nine zero,” direct rudder orders such as “Starboard ten,” or rates of turn such as “Fifteen degrees rate of turn to port.”

The actual helm is quite small, not bigger than the steering wheel of a car. Generally, the quartermasters are only at the helm when the ship is sailing in confined waters such as buoyed channels or rivers, or when making large course alterations. At other times the ship is steered electronically through various autopilot systems.

The main autopilot system is called NACOS, for Navigation Command System. Quite literally the ship can follow a preprogrammed track by itself and can even slow down at its destination. It will not allow for traffic though. These preprogrammed tracks end near the entrance of a port and from there on it’s all manual again until the ship is docked.

P.S. Thanks to Blog Board member Andre van Schoonhoven who got us the photo of the ship’s wheel in record time!

Eurodam Dedication to Be on ‘Holy Ground’

The dedication of Eurodam will take place in Rotterdam, where the cruise terminal is located on “holy ground” — the Wilhelminapier. The present cruise terminal used to be the terminal of the “old” Holland-Amerika Lijn, the shipping company well known from the sailings during the 1890s and 1920s out of Rotterdam to the “promised land.”

Aerial photo of Wilhelminapier from 1938, courtesy Maritiem Museum Rotterdam.

About half a million of Europeans made the one-way trip, escaping from poverty and looking forward to new opportunities. They all followed the Pilgrim Fathers, who set sail from Delfshaven, one of the oldest ports in Rotterdam, with their ship Speedwell in 1620.

When Nieuw Amsterdam II left Rotterdam Nov. 8, 1971, for the last crossing to New York, an import part of Dutch maritime history came to an end.

Since the early 1990s the area of the Wilhelminapier has been redeveloped with a new theater, a new courthouse and a lot of skyscrapers — with even more skyscrapers to be built. The area is now nicknamed “Manhattan aan de Maas.”

At the top of the pier there is Hotel New York, a very popular place in Rotterdam. Built in 1880, it is the former headquarters of the Holland-Amerika Lijn.

At the top of the building you can find a gold-colored weather vane, shaped like a schooner. The vane represents the schooner De Halve Maen (The Half Moon), explorer Henry Hudson’s ship with which he tried to find a northeastern passage from Amsterdam to India in 1609. You know the story: instead of India Hudson “discovered” Manhattan and named the local river the Hudson. In 1614, on the banks of the Hudson River a village was founded — New Amsterdam, later known as New York.

Since early 2007 Holland America Line has been back in Rotterdam with an office located in the Montevideo building, one of the tallest buildings in the Netherlands. When you look out of the office windows, you can see the present-day cruise terminal as well as Hotel New York.

Rotterdam arriving home. In the background are World Port Center (right) and the Montevideo building with the M on top, where Holland America’s Rotterdam office is located.

You can watch an online movie on the history and future of Wilhelminapier here.

Insulating for Safety

Chief Officer and Blog Board member Andre van Schoonhoven sent us these behind-the-scenes shots of fire-proof insulation being installed on Eurodam.

Recently, the U.S. Coast Guard went on board to conduct the structural fire protection inspection. According to Andre, insulation is a very big part of that inspection. Because of the insulation material, the bulkheads will contain fires for up to 60 minutes.

Andre said that so far a total of 140,000 square meters (1.5 million square feet) of insulation material has been installed on the ship.

Views from Under the Waterline

Here are a couple more photos from Eurodam’s recent drydock in Trieste, Italy.

Chief Electrician Ed van Weijen sent this image of the two Azipod propulsion units. You can really grasp the size of the ship when you compare it to the size of the workers. Note the one worker on the scafolding by the portside Azipod and the two workers near the center of the photo touching up the ship’s paint.

Captain Werner Timmers, master of Zuiderdam, was kind enough to send us an “Azipod 101″ that explains how the podded propulsion units work:

Basically the pods are big outboard engines. The propellors and their electric motors hang underneath the ship and can be rotated to provide thrust in any direction we want. So to steer, we turn the pods. There are no rudders. For maneuvering in port we also have three bow thrusters with 2,500 horse power each.

There are basically three modes to steer the ship:

When in sea mode, either the ship’s wheel or the autopilot on the bridge controls both pods at the same time, and the steering angle is limited to 35 degrees. This is much like a conventional ship. The wheel is only about one foot across — not like in the old sailing ship days.

When in maneuvering mode, the control of the pods is separated and they are operated individually from two separate control levers. Each pod can be turned 360 degrees and run forward or astern as needed.

When in joystick mode, both pods and the thrusters are controlled by a single control lever. We turn the control lever in the direction we want the ship to move and the computer decides how it will use the pods and thrusters to accomplish the movement.

Chief Officer Andre van Schoonhoven sent us the photo of the port stabilizer fin below. Stabilizers usually are used to reduce the roll that a vessel experiences while underway due to wave action. The fins extend beyond the hull of the vessel below the waterline, and their angle can be adjusted depending on the heel angle of the vessel. The stabilizers operate similarly to airplane wings.

Silk Den Lounge

Blog Board members Frank de Vries and Andre van Schoonhoven graciously took these photos of Silk Den under construction so we could show you what the lounge looks like now and pair them with renderings of what it will look like when it’s complete — a “before and after,” you could say.

The Silk Den lounge is located adjacent to Tamarind Restaurant and boasts panoramic views of the ocean and Lido pool area.

Port view:

Starboard view:

Video: Painting Eurodam’s Hull

For our first video posting, we have a brief clip from Chief Engineer Frank de Vries of shipyard personnel painting Eurodam’s hull. This is from a couple of weeks ago when Eurodam was in dry dock prior to the final phase of sea trials. The hull was cleaned and repainted with a nonpolluting epoxy to help it slip through the water and meet contracted speed requirements.

Meet Alexander Bakker, Our Man in Rotterdam

Alexander Bakker is a public relations professional in Rotterdam who is working with Holland America on preparations for the upcoming Eurodam inaugural. He will be sending us occasional blog posts on everything from the history of Holland America’s headquarters in Rotterdam to interviews with the pilot and harbor master, and who knows what else. Here’s his first entry:

Rotterdam is Warming Up!
The city of Rotterdam is warming up for the Eurodam. A special task-force of Holland America Line is lining up the dedication event, which in fact is not one, but a series of events spread over not less than four days!

When the Oosterdam dedication took place in Rotterdam in 2003, more than 300,000 people moved toward the city center and the banks of the river Nieuwe Maas to watch the Oosterdam, which was moored at the cruise terminal together with HAL flagship Rotterdam.

This time the new ship has to do it on her own, but it is expected that again hundreds of thousands people will come and watch. That will start with Eurodam sailing into Rotterdam on Sunday morning June 29. That same day, late in the afternoon, Eurodam will leave port for a short “cruise to nowhere,” returning early the next morning.

During its stay in Rotterdam, Eurodam will host different parties and events, such as a recruitment event and a reception of HAL’s pension fund and De Lijn, the association of former and current employees of HAL.

Until then there is a lot of work to do for everybody involved.

Happy Birthday Holland America Line!

Left to right: Holland America Line employees Martha Johnsen, Kate Rojecki, Fauzi Daud, Trina Holm, President and CEO Stein Kruse, Steve Simao, Laurie Bohn, Joe Laing, Blog Board member Simon Douwes, Paul Grigsby and Vazul Szakacs. Daud, the line’s human resources manager, has been with the company for an impressive 35 years.

Holland America Line turns 135 today! The company opened in Rotterdam, Netherlands, April 18, 1873, as the catchily named Nederlandsch-Amerikaansche Stoomvaart Maatschappij, or, translated into English, the Netherlands-America Steamship Company. Since then, the line has carried more than 10 million passengers from Europe to the New World and to vacation destinations across the globe.

Holland America Line has been headquartered in Seattle, Wash., since 1983 and last year reopened a sales and marketing office in Rotterdam.

Through the years, Holland America Line was a cargo line shipping goods from Europe, transported thousands of immigrants to the U.S. and Canada in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and supported the Allied cause during two world wars.

Purchased by Carnival Corp. in 1989, the company grew rapidly through a shipbuilding program that has seen the introduction of 13 new vessels, with Eurodam the 14th ship in the fleet.

Today, Holland America Line’s fleet offers nearly 500 cruises to 314 ports of call in 97 countries, territories or dependencies.

Satellites Antennas Installed

Don’t worry, Eurodam cruisers! You’ll be able to access your e-mail and catch up on worldly events on CNN during your cruise. Blog Board member Ed van Weijen sent us these images of one of the television satellite antennas being installed and all three antenna domes in place.

According to van Weijen, the two outer domes are for the television system, and the dome in the middle is for the communication systems.

There also are two smaller antenna domes behind the three large ones — one is the back-up for the communication systems and the other one also is for communication, but it’s more expensive to use.