07 April 2011; La Spezia, Italy.

 As the port of La Spezia is a major gateway port for industrial exports and imports, it is a busy port. So busy, that the cruise ships are a not such an important part of the operation. All the docks are given over to the cargo ships and the cruise ships have to anchor. That is in a way a blessing in disguise as with this setup we can ender directly into the downtown area instead of having to bus everybody out of the port area and around the bay. That would take at least 20 to 25 minutes and thus a 10 minute tender ride is a much more preferable option. It is not happening very often that when we visit a major port that instead of docking, the ship goes to anchor and is happy with it. La Spezia is as far as this is concerned an anomaly among the cruise ports. It is only under very bad weather circumstances, when anchoring is not safe, that a cruise ship will be docked somewhere in the commercial port. To use the words of our pilot “Doing that does not make the harbour master very happy”. (Please pronounce with Italian accent…..) 

With quite a bit of traffic around us we approached the port from the South East. To create a bit of order in the mayhem that normally surrounds the approaches to a busy port; the local authorities have laid out long shipping lanes for arrival and departure. These are diverging from the port entrance and that keeps the inbound and outbound ships quite nicely apart. That did not mean that it was a simple approach. This time we had a Chinese container ship to contend with, which either could not slow down, did not want to slow down or for another unknown reason had to go ahead of us during our pilot station approach. It is always preferable to have a ship that you do not trust, ahead of you so you can see what it is doing and therefore we moved aside a little bit and let the container carrier cut in front of us. As soon as he was passed, he started to slow down and now he was REALLY in front of us. Then he got a call from his agent saying that the dock was still occupied and that made him move off to an anchorage. It would have made more sense to do it the other way around but……………

The harbour of La Spezia is a natural bay with a breakwater all across keeping the waves out during bad weather. The cruise ships anchor at the town side from where this picture was taken.

La Spezia, together with Civitavecchia and Messina employs pilots that are always in a hurry. They keep calling you until they know that you are exactly giving the right time of arrival at the pilot boarding area and then come racing out. Nearly every boarding speed is acceptable (Those in Messina hop on and off with 18 knots) and then urge you to keep up the speed to the berth. As soon as you are more or less there, they run off again to the next ship. They get paid by each ship movement so the more ships they handle the more money they earn. For the port it is good as well as the turn around of the ships goes very efficiently. At the same time by keeping the number of pilots employed to the bare minimum they can boost their pay check of course. As a result they lead a very hectic life even when the pilot distance, mostly not more then 2 miles from dock to sea is not that big. To quote once again the pilot: “ it make-ka my wife very happy and me-a a little sad”.

Still I do not like to race into ports and thus with the gentle speed of 10 knots I brought the ship to the anchorage and there we sat for the day among glorious sunshine. Right next us was the main fairway and all day long, cargo ships were coming by at very close quarters. If I were a guest today I would have remained on my balcony, just to enjoy all that traffic. Most of the guests went ashore however and only came back in the late afternoon. I had hoped to sail exactly on time but in the end we were delayed 45 minutes as one my crewmembers had to be medically disembarked. I can luckily advise that he is doing well and should be dismissed from Hospital in a few days.

Tonight we will sail straight down the coast, well as much as possible, as the island of Elba is in the way. Once we have passed it we change course to the South East and head straight for Civitavecchia. I am going to be early, to ensure that the tours to Rome will not be delayed, at least not by the ship. Also we have heavy loading for the Hotel department and it is as important to ensure that the Hotelmanager does not run out of potatoes for the remainder of the cruise. The weather is holding nicely and tomorrow it should be another sunny, wind still but slightly chilly day.