08 May 2013; Skagway, Alaska.

If you could drive from Juneau to Skagway it would be about 40 miles as the crow flies. However nature planned, most inconveniently, a complete mountain range in the way and thus we have to sail around it.  That means travelling all the way up the Lynn Canal at which end the town is located. The strange thing is, that with Juneau being the capital of Alaska, it is completely locked in and Skagway has access by road to the whole world as you can hop over the Canadian border and drive anywhere from there. For Juneau it is either the Ferry or the Airplane. Once again we followed the Zaandam at a safe distance of 3 miles and lined up for a first line arrival at 06.30. As the season is just starting, we are the only two ships in Skagway and thus we were parked together at the Alaskan Railroad dock for the day.   Tomorrow we will split up as the Zaandam goes to Tracy Arm and we go to Glacier Bay. The day after tomorrow we will rejoin again in Ketchikan after which we sail together back to Vancouver.  This is the first time in my career that I am sailing in tandem with another company ship for the whole week but it will stop next cruise, when the Zaandam will go up to Seward. We will wait another week before we do the same and then alternate with her.

An old overview & rainy day photo. It shows a Celebrity cruise ship at the dock that we occupied today. The s-class ship (Veendam) in the fore ground is at the Ore dock, as the paddlewheeler Queen of the North is occupying the Broadway dock.

Skagway found its fame and glory in the Gold rush of 1898 when it formed the best access to the gold fields by ship. Ever since that time the town has survived by making a successful transfer to a tourist town that thrives on the cruise ship visits in the summer.

 It has the great advantage that it exactly fits in the cruise ship schedule for an overnight sailing. As a result it will have a very busy summer season again with quite a few days that all docks are occupied. That will mean two ships at the Railroad dock, (mainly Princess and Celebrity) one ship at the Broadway dock (Holland America) and one ship at the Ore dock (Disney and others)

All three docks have the option to get the train close to the ship and that train ride up the Pass is one of the main attractions of visiting Skagway. Then there is the town itself which façade is still very much “Frontier Style” as long as you do not look at the shop signs. Columbian Emeralds were definitely not there during the Gold rush days. I had not been ashore here for a long time but the pilot enticed me to come out for lunch as the town now boasts a Thai Restaurant. Service was very ‘frontier” style but the food was good so I was not amazed that I found half of my crew inside as well. Most of the shops were already open and that meant that the summer camp up the valley was in full swing again. There is a half yearly migration of shop attendants coming and going to Skagway. The local population is about 400 souls and that swells to approx. 800 when the tourist season starts. Some of the shop attendants return to shops in the Caribbean when the season is finished here and starts in the Carib.

I was amazed to see that for the summer a lot of Skagwegians (?) have double duties. So I had the honor this morning to have my ropes being pulled ashore by the Mayor of Skagway and in the evening having the ropes let go by the local fire chief.  As is the case in Juneau, we used to always have a dog supervising the proceedings, a beautiful yellow Labrador, but I have been informed that the dog is getting older and has retired. So there is a vacancy of a Senior Rope Supervisor available. No experience needed, friendly disposition a must.

Old soldiers never die. They just get upgraded……. (Photo from somewhere on the internet)

We also saw an old friend again, the ferry Malespina. There was talk that she was going to be retired and that a new ferry was going to be constructed. However building ferries in Alaska is a sort of committee project (to get funding from various sources) and nothing has come of it.

Thus good old Malespina was once again refurbished and now enters her 50^th year of service. To celebrate that she will carry a yellow funnel this season instead of the normal blue color.  She pulled in briefly at the ferry dock next to us. She will also have a busy season here, as many a camper / RV will come up from Seattle to Skagway and go from there up into the interior.

At 20.30 we turned around in the basin and set sail for Glacier Bay. We will arrive there at 07.00 hrs, to collect the Rangers. I will be getting 10 of them on board for the day. Many more than usual but I am expecting that most of them are trainee’s and maybe a supervisor or so, as they have to set up their program for the season.