08 Sept. 2013: Vancouver, Canada.

According to plan we lined up for a 01.00 hrs. passage through the Seymour Narrows. This takes a bit of organizing by the pilots as on a Saturday night, you have cruise ships southbound and cruise ships going northbound. On top of that fishing boats, tugs and tows and if you are unlucky also private yachts. The main thing is that the ships do not pass in the Narrows as it is too small to have room for two ships that are drifting through on the current. Sometimes hours before, the pilots are already in contact trying to figure out what would work best for all parties. Now with modern technology, texting is one of the methods that are being used as well.

Overview of Discovery Pass with Seymour Narrows.

This morning, the challenge was to deal with two southbound cruise ships, the Celebration and the Statendam, two northbound cruise ships, the Zuiderdam and the Sapphire Princess, two southbound tugs with barges and some other tug and tows. The latter were not going through the Narrows but were going to take advantage of the coming following tide southbound, and were planning to join the traffic flow after the turn of the tide. One of them was a wooden log tow, and you do not want one of those to be in your way, when you are flushed through the Narrows. These log tows, are long rafts of wooden trees and poles, lashed together, and then pulled towards a pulp mill. Quite often by a relatively small tug.

Seymour Narrows itself. The challenge lies in the fact that ships have to curve around Maud Island on the right hand side, while being set over by the current.

The most important rule for going through is, that if there is a traffic jam then the ships with the following tide have the right of way, as it much more difficult to slow down with a following tide when bucking against it. If you are the ship that goes against the tide and you want to get through before the other ship is exercising its right to go through, then you either have to be early or make arrangements. As we all want to go through close to slack tide, it means making arrangement.
Normal tug and tows are normally not an issue. Most skippers are happy to line up behind a cruise ship and then sail through while that cruise ship is creating a clear path through any traffic ahead. So most often they hold off a few miles North or south of the Narrows until the cruise ships have come charging through. That always works unless the tug boat skipper gets his timing wrong.

That is what we had this morning. Arrangements were made, the tug and barge were going to wait and then the tug just kept going. It needed several calls before the tugboat skipper realized that being very close to the Narrows might result in being flushed through together with the cruise ship and with a swerving barge behind you going around the bend, is not a good idea. In the end he managed to put the brakes on just in time but still it made his barge almost overtake him. But he left enough room for us to get by and that was what it was all about to start with.

As soon as we were clear and south of Campbell River we put the after burners on and went to warp speed (19 knots) to get on time to Vancouver. Which we did and by 07.30 we were happily docked at Canada Place. We were lucky with the weather, as just after we docked the haziness came down again but it did not take that long before the sun burned it off.

By 5 pm. we will be on our way again for what will be the last cruise North to Seward. We have three more weeks to go before the season ends. I hope that the weather will hold.