 |
|
|
 Travel & Outdoors | November 2007 
Post-9/11 Rules Sink My Spirits
 Gordon Dillow - OC Register
go to original
| | Although there hasn't been a bona fide terrorist attack on a cruise ship in more than two decades, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks the cruise ship industry, like everyone else, has had to adopt stricter security measures. |
Among the many, many ways that the fear of terrorism has made our lives more difficult, here's another one.
The captain of the MS Oosterdam won't let me drive the ship.
I'll get back to that in a minute, but first the background.
As I noted in a column last week, I'm on a seven-day cruise to the "Mexican Riviera," which is to say, the tourist-infested coastal towns of Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlαn and Puerto Vallarta. As you can imagine, this is not a hardship assignment; in fact it's not an assignment at all. It's a vacation.
In any event, in the column I noted that although there hasn't been a bona fide terrorist attack on a cruise ship in more than two decades the closest to it was a failed attack with rocket-propelled grenades by pirates off the coast of Africa two years ago in the wake of the 9/11 attacks the cruise ship industry, like everyone else, has had to adopt stricter security measures.
Some of those are open and apparent the triple-screening of passengers, X-rays of baggage, the same sort of stuff you get on airlines. Other security measures include things the cruise industry doesn't like to talk about, such as the deployment of onboard anti-terrorism equipment like long-range acoustical devices, which can deliver an eardrum-bursting beam of sound at an attacker from hundreds of yards away.
And then there are the things that you used to be able to do on a cruise ship but can't do anymore which brings us back to the captain not letting me drive the ship.
The skipper of the MS Oosterdam "MS" is Dutch for motorschip, or "motorship" in English is Capt. Olav van der Waard, a Netherlands-born former cargo ship officer, now a 17-year veteran of Holland America cruise lines and a captain for the past five years.
I chatted with Capt. van der Waard at one of those onboard receptions where the captain has to stand around in his white uniform and answer dumb questions from the passengers. My dumb question was whether in lieu of swimming with captive dolphins in Cabo or buying authentic made-in-China Mexican curios from the merchants of Mazatlαn I could get a tour of the working parts of the ship the engine room, bridge, that sort of thing.
The captain was firm, as captains are supposed to be.
"Our policies prohibit it," the captain said in precise, Dutch-accented English. "We used to do that (before 9/11), but it is no longer possible. It is unfortunate."
At that point I jokingly suggested that if I couldn't even see the bridge, then allowing me to drive the ship was probably out of the question which earned me a tight smile from Capt. van der Waard. Yes, of course that was out of the question.
Which was probably just as well. Because for a landlubber like me, the idea that even seasoned seamen can successfully move a giant ship from Point A to Point B is nothing short of miraculous.
True, in these days of global positioning systems, knowing where you are on the high seas may not be that difficult. Nor is high speed a factor. The Oosterdam has a top speed of about 27 mph, which isn't all that much faster than the fastest clipper sailing ships of almost two centuries ago. Ships like this one cover vast distances not by speed but by relentlessness that is, they never stop.
No, what's impressive about this ship and all big ships is the massiveness of the thing. Although almost dwarfed by some other seagoing monsters out there, the Oosterdam is still more than three football fields long 951 feet to be exact and 10 stories high. It's rated at 85,000 gross register tons, which refers not to the collective weight of the passengers after they've been grazing at the buffet for a week, but rather to interior cubic volume, or something like that. However you measure it, it's big; even at just 27 mph, once you get it going it takes more than a half-mile to stop.
Well, I'd like to go on, but the captain has come on the intercom to announce that there's been a security breach, that there's been a bomb explosion and fire on C-deck, that we're preparing to abandon ship.
It's just a drill, of course, an exercise for the 800 crew and staff members. But it's another reminder of how concerns about terrorism affect our lives.
You can't get away from them, even on a luxury cruise ship on the Mexican Riviera.
Contact the writer at GLDillow(at)aol.com |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us