Alaska is known to deliver four seasons in one week and if possible all four on Monday morning. Thus the weather forecast was way off. Based on my best estimates I thought we would have a dry day and the local weather station backed me up on that. But rain clouds are only one mountain range away and today the rain clouds decided to come around the mountain ridge and visit Skagway. So it was a cold, rainy and windy day. It looks like thought that it will only be today and tomorrow it should be dry again. Juneau is across the next mountain range to the East and that will hopefully keep the rain away.
We were the last ship on the schedule to come in as we were docking at the Ore dock. This dock is used for loading ore ships with ore coming via the Skagway railroad out of the interior. For the summer time they clean the dock up and it is used for cruise ships. There is a clean and nice walkway to downtown and the big advantage is that the tour busses can stop right outside the gangway. Also the helicopter tours are less then a 3 minute walk away. For those who choose not to leave the ship, it is interesting to see what is going on with the helicopters all day long. The Skagway train, which one of the most popular tours in Skagway, can get very close to the gangway and that makes life easy as well.
The funny thing is that while Skagway had rain, Juneau and Ketchikan are going through a drought. Although it is great for the cruise ships to have all these dry days while cruising along, for the locals it is not much fun. Juneau now has a full on hose-pipe-ban. No more water for the cruise ships to load and even the town consumption is closely followed to see if further cuts are necessary. Ketchikan is a town without a town water supply. Each house catches its own water from the roof and leads it into cisterns under the house. If you happen to have a house with a small cistern capacity then after three days of no rain, things can get a bit desperate. It means that you have to buy water from a local supplier who gets it from a nearby lake, but has to filter it and of course charges for this.
Ketchikan is not desperate yet but as they say “the natives are restless”. Looking in my crystal bowl, it seems that it is going to be a dry day as well during our call two days from now. Not good for the water level in the cisterns.
Sailing away from Skagway goes via the opposite routine. The ships leave all around 8 pm. which has to do with the returning of the last tours, and then with 15 to 20 minutes gaps, one after the other leaves the dock. We came in last and so we left last. The Veendam is only going to Juneau, which is just around the corner and even with the early arrival we have planned it is a slow run. Thus we let all the other ships go ahead and then sedately follow the parade down the Lynn Canal.
For those who had been with us on the northbound leg, they now could see Haines from a distance as we passed that port about 2 hours after leaving Skagway. You could still see the town and the scenery around it, as sunset was at 22.11 hrs. (Although this time that took place behind the rain clouds) and it never gets really dark, as the sun rises again at 03.56 hrs. in the morning. The nights at the moment are more a prolonged dusk. I am waiting to see the first signs of the Northern Lights, or the Aurora Borealis, but nobody on the other ships have reported any sightings yet. However we are not even half way through the season, so there is more than enough time for them to appear.
We are scheduled to dock in Juneau at 5 am in the morning and that means that standby starts for me at 3.30 am. It is indeed a short run to Juneau.
June 11, 2008 at 7:14 am
Thank you for such interesting and entertaining notes. I look forward to them each morning and have referred several friends to your weblog. In case you have not seen it, the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute has a great website with Aurora Borealis information. You can find it here: http://www.gedds.alaska.edu/AuroraForecast/
June 11, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Captain,
Great opening sentence!
June 11, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Entertaining and informative! I look forward to reading your weblog each morning. You may not be aware that the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute has a great website with information about the Aurora Borealis and predictions as to when viewing in likely. They show that all of June will be very quiet in terms of activity.
June 11, 2008 at 6:06 pm
The shuffling of the ships at the docks on this date in Skagway caused much confusion for those of us who service independent tours. We are used to HAL ships being at the Broadway dock in the high summer! Thus, we went to the Ore Dock to pick up passengers from the ship that was scheduled to be there, one of the ships scheduled for the railroad dock was at the Broadway dock, etc.
As to the Ore dock and transportation from Canada of ore, it is now done by trucks coming over the highway with what’s called ‘pots’ mounted on the trailers. I forget how many tons of ore each of the pots hold. There are usually 3 per tractor/trailer. Anyway, the Ore dock sure gets cleaned up nice, don’t it?
I would enjoy it very much if sometime when you have a moment or two to yourself while you are in Skagway, meeting you. I know with your schedule it is near impossible, but think every time the Veendam docks in Skagway–I am thinking of you and this weblog.
June 11, 2008 at 8:47 pm
With the apparent drought in Ketchikan and Juneau, and the ship’s capacity to produce more water than it consumes, it occurs to me there may be another business opportunity here for Holland America. Bunker hoses can be used in either direction!
June 12, 2008 at 7:42 am
I apologize for the double posting. When I went to the site in the afternoon and found my message was still not showing I thought it was because I included a link, so posted again without that information.