Crow’s Nest Gives Bird’s-Eye View

Pam Kern sure has been busy since she arrived at the yard. Our latest contributor sent us these photos of the Crow’s Nest. The lounge offers 270-degree views and transforms into a nightclub each evening.

The bar is getting installed.

Above are some of the computer stations in the Explorations Café, a comfortable lounge with a coffee house environment. Guests can surf the Internet and check e-mail, listen to music or simply read the morning paper.

During Westerdam’s refit, the line moved the Explorations Café to the starboard side of the Crow’s Nest. It worked so well that they are doing the same on Eurodam. The library (not pictured) also will be integrated into the Explorations Café area.

Captain’s Log: The Art is Arriving

VFD Architects of the Netherlands, our interior and art consultants, have arrived at the yard and the installation of the priceless artworks has begun!

The wooden crates containing the various paintings, models and statues are loaded on board and delivered to the Half Moon and Hudson rooms. Here, they are carefully unpacked and then transported to their destinations elsewhere on the ship where they are installed by experts.

Micky Arison Visits Eurodam

Carnival Corporation & plc Chairman and CEO Micky Arison paid a visit to Eurodam at the Marghera yard today to check on the ship’s progress. We’re told he was pleased with what he saw.

From left: Martin Vos, project manager with CCS; Max Giuffrida, Fincantieri manager technical plant; Paolo Capobianco, director of the Marghera yard; Enrico Buschi, director of Fincantieri’s cruise ship unit; Micky Arison; Cristiano Bazzara, Fincantieri manager responsible for hotel operations; Luke de Micco, Fincantieri interior architect; Pierluigi Punter, Fincantieri project manager for Eurodam, and Blog Board member Pieter Rijkaart, Holland America Line’s director of newbuilding.

Who Knew 11,000 Volts is Only ‘Medium Voltage?’

Blog Board member and chief electrician Ed van Weijen sent us this photo and technical description of the 11,000-volt main switchboards on board Eurodam.

Meet Pam Kern, Our New Yard Correspondent

Pam Kern

As Eurodam’s delivery date approaches, the members of our Blog Board are becoming ever more entrenched in getting the ship ready to sail. To ensure we keep the ENB up to date, we’ve enlisted Pam Kern to be our correspondent in Marghera to help keep us posted on the ship’s progress with photos and interviews.

Kern was a guest relations manager with HAL for 10 years, so she has extensive knowledge of the line and its ships. In fact, she was responsible for the start-up of Holland America Line’s first Neptune Lounge on Rotterdam VI.

Since Kern’s “retirement” from working at sea, she became certified as a Red Cross disaster relief volunteer. She also is pursuing a second career by working toward a masters in psychology and ultimately a PhD.

Why is she at the yard, you ask? Well, in addition to being a former HAL employee, she’s also married to Captain Jeroen van Donselaar. So not only is she our yard correspondent, but she’s also the first lady of Eurodam. Kern and van Donselaar will celebrate their second wedding anniversary July 16. And some of you may have witnessed the proposal, which, as we heard, was delivered on stage during the Captain’s Welcome on an Oosterdam cruise!

Welcome to the team, Pam!

Observation Deck Verandah Stateroom

We’ve received several inquiries about the balconies on the Observation Deck verandah staterooms, so we’re posting this recent photo.

Eurodam has 4,528 Keys

Did you ever wonder how the different doors, pantries, lockers and spaces with doors are being locked on board? Of course, you need things to open these spaces and that is the beauty of a key. The Eurodam, being the first in its class, boasts a huge collection of keys. All in all it has 4,528 keys (four sets total). Organizing, tagging and labeling the keys to match the correct door is a huge undertaking.

This has been done on the previous ships and it is done by the guest relations manager in collaboration with the chief officer who, in the end, is responsible for safekeeping the keys. The keys were manufactured by Trioving, a company from Norway that has been supplying the ship’s keys for many HAL newbuilds and is also doing it for the Eurodam delivery.

The first step is to ensure that all tags were ordered via the chief officer. Every department has its own color of key tag.

Below is the listing of all colors and their departments:

DESIGNATED COLORS PER DEPARTMENT
LIGHT BLUE: Engine
DARK BLUE: Deck
RED: Emergency
YELLOW: Housekeeping
WHITE: Hotel/Administration
PURPLE: Food & Beverage
GREEN: Medical
ORANGE: Entertainment/Cruise

MASTER KEYS AND SUB-MASTER KEYS
With the individual keys come the master keys. These are under the care of the chief officer, and he signs them off to the different departments. There are different kinds of keys, as follows:

The EMK is an overall master and is used as an emergency master key. This key will open deadbolt locks on cabins and all lockers, etc.

The GMK is known as the general master key and is for all the doors, offices, lockers, steward stations, etc., and any lock on board that is not a cabin.

The ECO key is the yard-level key for all cabins. Once the ship starts to sail the ECO key should be moved up a notch to the next level, making the ECO useless to add security as ECOs often get lost during cleaning or loading, etc. That is the worst-case scenario, as it is imperative those who sign for a master key treat it like gold and look after it.

Then the next step is to check with the locking plan of the ship and the Trioving Excel file, and compare them. Here, all the spaces that need to be locked that were on the Trioving list, but not indicated on the locking plan and vice versa have to be noted. Afterward the chief officer will be advised of any irregularities and then Trioving will be notified. Other plans like fire door plans of the ship sometimes have to be consulted as well to get the accurate door location and name. Having done that, there will be spaces that will come out which were not in the Trioving list to have keys, but need to be locked as per the locking plan.

Next will come the delivery of the hard product, the keys! These keys come in little baggies, in sets of four per deck. The keys are cross-checked with the Trioving Excel file and the Trioving key delivery file, and most of the time there are some spaces that do not have keys made and Trioving has to be advised of this.

After the entire cross-checking is done, the merging of the labels for the correct keys follows and then the labels will be printed. Following this comes the major task of inserting the correct labels into the correct key tag per department per deck.

For so many deliveries now, the loading team helps to complete this project. A group of four guys from the loading team sits with the GRM and starts tagging the keys. This takes at least two to three weeks for the whole roster of keys to be tagged, provided that all tags are completed, since pending tag arrival could also impede the process.

Once all keys are labeled, they are placed on a ring. All keys are arranged per the key file list per department per deck. Then, the lengthy and careful task of cross-checking again for the final time is done to ensure that each department got the right key on the ring itself before closing off the ring. The chief officer gets a copy of all the keys, plus the cabinet keys and the padlock keys. In totality, all the keys that he gets end up in a huge box due to the huge number of keys.

When all of the above process is done, the distribution of the keys to the different heads of departments follows. Each head of department will sign off that they received their keys. The Engine Department gets the biggest chunk of keys, followed by the Housekeeping Department from the Hotel Department, and the Medical Department gets the smallest number of keys, 12 kinds of four sets, to be exact. This culminates the key project, which basically is the grand task of labeling the right key for the correct lockable space.

Captain’s Log: Turning on a Dime on the Tyne

Capt. Jeroen van Donselaar

Hello again from the Fincantieri Yards in Marghera where the Eurodam is nearing completion!

As you may have gathered from the various other articles and images on this Web site, progress of the public areas has been very good the last two weeks. More and more areas, front of the house and back of the house, are now accepted by the “owner,” which is us, and are ready to be moved into.

Personally, I am also very happy because a couple of days ago my wife Pam arrived in Venice. She will sail with me the next few months. Prior to her arrival certain individuals in the HAL office here in the yard jokingly commented, “Today you are still the captain, but tomorrow you will have to answer to the commander-in-chief!”

Every day more and more crew members and officers arrive at the yard. We still have all of them put up in hotels and apartments, but because of the increasing numbers this is becoming more and more of a logistical challenge in terms of transportation, lodging and office space. So until the day we move on board, which will be Saturday May 31, we will have to manage somehow.

The official handover of Eurodam from Fincantieri to Holland America Line is set for June 16 at 11 a.m. Until that time we will be guests of Fincantieri on board. Our departure has been set at 4 p.m. on June 20. We will briefly call at Malaga, Spain, to load more supplies and to discharge waste before we head for Southampton, U.K.

As for myself, in addition to my daily walk-throughs on board I am heavily involved with the preparations for the inaugural festivities and the voyage planning for the inaugural season. This involves not only liaising with Third Officer Tim Lodder, who has been tasked with the actual plotting of the tracklines in the navigational computers and charts, but also communicating with the various agencies and authorities of the ports that we will be visiting.

Some ports are easy and straightforward, while others are a little more involved, such as Newcastle, U.K., for instance. The Eurodam is quite big for this new — at least for Holland America — destination. The cruise terminal is located on the river Tyne, and our arrival has to be timed around slack tide to avoid the brunt of the current and the ferry traffic. Based on this I have decided to arrive at the breakwaters one hour before our scheduled arrival, both on July 11 and July 31. This will give us sufficient time to sail about a half-mile past our berth to the widest part of the Tyne, turn the vessel there and berth bow to sea, portside alongside the Northumbrian Quay.

This turning area is only 350 meters in diameter and since the Eurodam’s length overall is 285 meters, this is a precision maneuver. The most import thing when executing a “One-Eighty” in tight quarters is to first stop the ship completely versus starting the turn with headway still on. Of course, positioning the ship in the middle of the turning space before the start of the turn is crucial as well.

The Eurodam is a highly maneuverable ship. Just like the Vista-class ships she has three bow thrusters and two Azipods. Identical controls of the Azipods and thrusters are located on each of the two bridge wings.

These bridge wings give us a better view of the side of the ship when docking. During a turning maneuver, depending in which way we have to turn, one of the Azipods will be facing inboard at 90 degrees to provide the maximum efficiency thrusting the stern sideways. The bowthrusters will be operated in the other direction and this will make the ship turn “on a dime” or better said, within 285 meters!

Progress on the Shops

Things move along quickly during construction, and the shops are no exception. Just last week we posted some photos, and look at the difference a week or two makes.

Update: Piet Sinke Will Not Be the First Man in Rotterdam to Greet Eurodam

Contrary to what we wrote in our earlier post, lucky Piet Sinke actually will meet Eurodam before the ship sails into Rotterdam.

Piet, who is editor of the “Daily Collection of Maritime Press Clippings,” does not have to fear a massive crowd in front of his house in Hook of Holland when the Eurodam sails into Rotterdam. The lucky guy already will be on board the vessel!

Piet lives at the Berghaven, the small port of Hook of Holland, right at the mouth of the river Nieuwe Waterweg. Normally, when an extraordinary ship sails into Rotterdam, usually Piet boards either a lifeboat or a pilot tender stationed at Berghaven to photograph the ship for his publication.

It just so happens that Piet is a good friend of Captain Jeroen van Donselaar, master of Eurodam, who advised HAL’s PR team to let Piet make the trip from Southampton to Rotterdam. That will enable Piet to make a very special edition of his worldwide-distributed e-mail newsletter.

In the meantime, Hook of Holland’s city council is a bit upset about not being involved in Eurodam’s arrival events, according to local newspaper reports. Therefore, Hook of Holland is planning its own activities on Sunday June 29, when the Eurodam arrives in Rotterdam.

So there almost certainly will be a massive crowd on the riverbank in Hook of Holland. But Piet does not mind anymore. He won’t have to fight the crowds to get to the ship.