Читать книгу The Captain's Journal - Hans M.C. Mateboer - Страница 6

Hurricanes! The name alone fills everyone with dread. We’ve all seen the terrible devastation such a storm can cause, and many people living in Florida and other coastal states have experienced the awesome power of the weather, especially during the late summer and early fall months. For us onboard ships, and particularly the captains, the hurricane season is a difficult one, too. You might think it’s for the same reasons, but that’s not altogether correct.

I’ve never been afraid of the high winds, the horrible weather, or the extremely high seas during these storms. A ship is in an enviable position because it can move away from the coming storm. A cruise ship is fast enough to do that, and frequently we run as speedy as we can.

Passengers booking a cruise during hurricane season don’t have to be too afraid of getting caught in one. What they do have to take in account is that they might not end up in the exotic ports mentioned in the colorful brochures – places full of sunshine and with people sipping cocktails, lounging in the sun on incredibly white beaches. Oh, yes, they still will be pampered and sit in the sun, but it might be on a different beach and in a completely different part of the Caribbean.

That last part is exactly what is dreaded by the captains who sail during hurricane season. Changing a port at the last possible moment can be a logistical nightmare. The answer would be to make that decision a bit earlier, but such would require extraordinary weather anticipation skills from the captain. The ship could go to another port for sure, but so might the hurricane. It’s so unpredictable that it might change course and threaten the very port the captain has just announced as a safe place to go, leaving the originally scheduled port unharmed. Passengers generally accept these changes, but they don’t take too kindly to a captain who changes the schedule unnecessarily. We’re expected to be infallible and able to predict the weather. In many cases, it is a nice thing to be put on such a high pedestal, but only if afterward your decision proves to be the right one.

Making a decision too late is even worse, not only because this might take the ship directly in the path of a hurricane, but also because this would pose danger to the ship and considerable inconvenience to the passengers and crew. If you have to run far ahead of the hurricane, the ship might not find a safe harbor for days.

I have sailed through a hurricane once in all my nearly thirty years at sea, and it was a remarkable experience. The ship took it well enough – after all, she was built to withstand the worst possible weather. But no matter how big the ship is, she bounces around like a ping-pong ball. This creates terrible sounds that cause an average person to think the ship is falling apart. Creaking panels and ceilings and the sounds of breaking plates in the kitchens are one thing, but my shopkeepers with Lladro porcelain and Swarovski crystal don’t take kindly to this sort of movement. All reasons for a captain to do anything to avoid a hurricane.

Another important reason to make a timely decision is that other ships encountering the same storm are likely to reach a similar conclusion at the same time. Those ports that aren’t threatened by the storm will see every ship diverting to them, and whoever books a berth first gets it.

Watching the news from my comfortable chair at home and seeing that one hurricane after the other was threatening the Caribbean, my thoughts went back to a cruise about fifteen years ago. The company I worked for had just started to operate, and dealing with cruise ships was still somewhat of a novelty to the management ashore.

For more than a week I’d been uneasy about a tropical depression that had developed into a hurricane and was slowly moving from the Atlantic into the Caribbean. For the present cruise we were fine, but our next itinerary was up for grabs as far as I could track it. Back in the homeport and embarking new passengers, I must have checked the weather every thirty minutes on every website available to me. Our route was supposed to take us to Nassau and then to St. Maarten, but the hurricane was already threatening that last island and I didn’t feel very good about going to Nassau either.

Calling my boss was no help. The man simply had no experience avoiding hurricanes. His question if we had enough plywood on the ship to board up the windows was enough proof to me that calling him was a waste of time. However, he insisted of being part of the decision-making group.

“Call me back tomorrow at 2 pm so we can discuss this further. I’ll make sure that I have a weather expert here in the office to advise you,” he chatted happily.

My remark that it wasn’t even 11am yet, making the 2 pm phone call more than twenty-seven hours away, an eternity when it comes to hurricanes, didn’t impress him. Hi boss Al also wanted to be involved in the conference call and had no time on his agenda before that. Seething, I put down the phone, cursing myself for even calling him. Waiting twenty-seven hours for a decision while a hurricane was approaching something I’d never contemplated.

That afternoon we left our Florida port. I did my staff introductions and later that evening, finished with my work, I decided to check the weather one more time before going to bed. To my horror, I saw my gut feeling had been right. The hurricane had increased in speed and force and was headed straight for Nassau and us. For a moment I sat there, thinking. But then I jumped up. The heck with my boss and Al, whoever he was. I wasn’t knowingly going to put my ship in the path of a hurricane and risking injuries to passengers. There was only one way to go from our position in the Florida Strait – south, as fast as we could.

Changing course, getting all engines on line, and revving up to full speed took only a few minutes because the officers had prepared this contingency plan. Calling an agent in Cozumel, a man I’d known from the days with my old company, then arranging a tour operator to set us up there took no more than an hour. After all, everybody living and working in the islands is as flexible as can be during this time of the year.

With grim satisfaction, I decided not to call my boss since it was almost midnight and I didn’t want to listen to his objections and his obvious fear of Al. He wouldn’t be able to change my mind anyway. The next morning, however, he called me, clearly in a panic. I’d just finished making a ship-wide announcement about the change of plan and received not one complaint from our passengers, which showed their good sense.

“The hurricane is almost in Nassau,” he shrieked in the phone. “Didn’t you see it coming? It’s dangerous over there.”

Then his boss came on the line. “Captain, you’re in hundred mile an hour winds. Are you aware of that?”

I looked at the phone. Was this guy for real?

“Well…errr, the weather is great over here, blue skies…”

He interrupted me. “What are you saying? Hang on!”

I heard him yelling at some guy, probably the company’s meteorologist.

“He’s having great weather! What are you trying to tell me?”

“Hello, hello!” I tried to get his attention, attempting to reduce the obvious damage being done. Nobody listened to me, and in the background I heard several confused voices. It was minutes before he picked up the phone again.

“What are you trying to do? You’re in a hurricane! Even CNN says so!”

“I’m not trying to do anything,” I told him. Of course, they couldn’t see the smirk on my face. This remark was met with at least twenty seconds of silence from their side. Then Bill came on, his voice expressing a clear lack of confidence in my mental abilities, but the undertone in his voice indicated the remote possibility that maybe he’d missed something.

“Not doing anything?” he asked incredulously.

“No, right now I’m fine. I took action last night and when I look out my window, I can see Havana in the distance. Tomorrow we’ll be in Cozumel. By the way, the weather really is beautiful here. How is it there?”

“It’s raining!” he gurgled, but then he exploded. “What do you mean Havana and Cozumel. Aren’t you in Nassau?!”

“Of course not! I’m not that dumb. A hurricane is headed there. We arranged everything. Shore excursions, a berth right downtown, happy passengers, you name it.”

The conversation lasted another thirty minutes, in which Bill frequently shifted from scolding me about doing this on my own, to praising me for making such a good decision. Putting the phone down, I smiled, happy with what I’d done. Instead of giving my passengers rain and rough seas, they had sunshine and were apparently pleased with my decision.

When we got to Cozumel, the weather was great there, too, while the weather channel reported heavy rain and near hurricane force winds in Nassau. This did a lot for my prestige as an accurate weather predictor, the fact that I advertised by placing reports on every notice board, notwithstanding.

In the meantime, I was in a much less superior frame of mind than I appeared to the passengers. The time for making a decision as to where to go next was approaching quickly. In my original, rather vague, plan I’d thought about the Cayman Islands, but another tropical depression had popped up in the Caribbean, so I had to throw that idea out the window even before we arrived in Cozumel.

The hurricane seemed to be tracking more to the north, and the staff captain and I agreed that Key West would be the next most likely port. It would give me time to see what the hurricane was going to do, and it would help me stay ahead and away from the brewing tropical depression in the Caribbean.

The passengers started cheering when I made my announcement over the loud speakers. By now they all understood the predicament we were in, and they thoroughly enjoyed the surprise itinerary I was concocting on an hour’s notice. The weather was still as beautiful as could be, and to be honest, I wasn’t above pretending that I’d planned it that way. On the bridge, however, the staff captain and I shared many anxious hours, pondering over our maps and trying to figure out what in the world to do next. Avoiding the storms was one thing, but finding a place to go was altogether different. Finding a port with some appeal in a location within easy reach that wasn’t under the influence of either storm system was almost impossible.

Key West was another beautiful port with even better weather than we’d had in Cozumel but the same old question popped up again – where to go next?

We spent another afternoon calling port authorities, checking availability, and monitoring the weather. By now, Bill was calling me five times a day, requesting that I make a complete plan for the remainder of the cruise. Al demanded it, he said! But no matter how much I wracked my brain, I couldn’t come up with any plan beyond a few hours, deciding on a next port while leaving the present one. It was clear to me that Bill had great difficulties coping with something as unpredictable as a cruise line. That ships sail, he clearly understood, but that ships could actually deviate from an itinerary was news to him. My remark that maybe he should take to flipping coins was a wrong one and, while the cruise ended at a private island in the Bahamas with very happy passengers and sunshine every single day, he never really forgave me for avoiding that hurricane.

I considered myself lucky that soon afterward Bill moved to another part of the company, a solid building that, upon him going home in the afternoon, would be in exactly the same spot when he returned the next morning.