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Statendam at the mercy of the tide
The Hotel Manager on board Holland America Line’s Statendam, Kees Van Santen had to choose his words carefully when talking to the media who had boarded in Brisbane on the Tuesday before Christmas for a two-night sample cruise.
The journalists and a travel agent group were hosted by Andrew Millmore, Managing Director of Travel the World and his Marketing Executive Eddie Wong and they joined more than 600 paying guests who had to walk a steep and shaky gangplank to board the 55,451-ton vessel on Tuesday.
Kees obviously wasn’t impressed and explained that P&O’s Pacific Sun had first dibs on Brisbane’s new port facilities which meant HAL passengers were shuffled through old storage sheds and had to deal with a gangplank that became increasingly steep as the tide rose.
“It wasn’t the most charming way for passengers to come onto the ship,” Kees said diplomatically.
Certainly some of the elderly would have struggled, despite the crew doing all they could to assist passengers.
The two-night cruise leg was unusual in that Statendam had been in dry dock in Brisbane for two weeks so the two nights were added onto the more traditional 16-night itinerary from Sydney to Auckland via Melbourne and Burnie.
During her spell in dry dock Statendam’s hull was painted and new carpet was laid and the ship took on supplies brought in from the US to keep the 50 per cent of passengers who were American happy.
“Around 80 per cent of our food and general supplies come from the US,” Kees said. That includes items from wine to toilet paper, while milk, fish, fresh fruit and vegetables and beef were sourced in Australia.
“It has to do with pricing and volume.” “If we bought everything in Australia it would double the price.”
Statendam continued from Sydney heading for its next port of Melbourne.
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