10 April 2011; Siracusa, Italy.

 The South East part of Sicily is a bit of an anomaly as it is more Greek in its roots than Italian. Several of the port names have a distinct Greek flavor and many of the local cultural traditions also have their roots in a Greek past. With that curious thought on my mind we approached the pilot station for 07.00 in the morning. I had never been to Siracusa (English spelling Syracuse) and based on the high hopes that I might be able to go alongside, I did not want to grope around in the dark near an unknown dock. Hence a pilot boarding time scheduled for after sunrise. So plan A was to tender and we setup everything accordingly. However if the master pilot conference went to my liking and I felt comfortable with the information provided, I was willing to go for plan B and attempt to dock. From the nautical chart I could not really see what the situation was so I simply had to go in, push the ships nose towards the docking area and see if it was feasible. The pilot looked relieved after I mentioned that the ships draft was as he needed it to be, there was no wind and thus we decided to give it a go.

The pier length was only 96 meters and that meant that I had to bring the ship all the way with the bow to the end of the dock to get the gangway in a good position and to let the ship sit safely on its ropes. Normally the highly tapered bow of the Prinsendam is a blessing for bad weather; however with docking at short piers it forms a challenge as it is difficult to get enough of it to rest against the pier side. Still: no wind, no problem. Thus we proceeded to the dock, make a wide approach as several spots of the port were quite shallow and once abeam of the dock put two mooring lines ashore and winched ourselves in, helped by the bow and stern thrusters. When we were nearly alongside; I nudged ahead to nestle the ship as much forward as possible. I had a longshoreman walk along with the bulb so that I could see how far I could go and then stopped 20 feet away from the end as otherwise I could not put out good breast lines for the bow. The whole procedure took a bit longer than normal but by 08.20 we were happily docked and the guests could stream ashore, instead of having to use the tenders. We were docked right in the middle of downtown and somehow I was not amazed to hear that we were the biggest cruise ship ever to dock in Siracusa. Well, when you sail on the Prinsendam then these sorts of things are not that unusual, it is all what the “Elegant Explorer” is about.

You can not dock much closer to downtown than this.

The town is in the process of constructing a 300 meter deep water berth nearby but the construction of it progresses only slowly, as there are “issues”. On board we call something like this (when red tape is involved): “Completion date beyond next quarter”. Thus the bigger ships might have to anchor for awhile longer before the pier is completed. Still the bay of Siracusa is very sheltered so it is not much of a problem, it just takes more time. Thus we sat there in glorious Sicilian sunshine on a beautiful Sunday with the Prinsendam towering over the Eastern part of the town. On a Sunday the locals come to the pier/boulevard with their children to see and to be seen and thus we had a lot of spectators. By the time we left there, there were a few thousand of them milling around to see us off and from the bridge wing we had a good look of what an Italian traffic jam looks like, as it seemed that every little car in the town tried to park on the water front. We left an hour late, as today we did the falls of the 2nd lifeboat and the process simply takes about 10 hours to complete. Still the run to our next port of call Kotor in Montenegro is a slow one, so I have plenty of time up my sleeve.

The large bay/harbour of Syracuse. Sheltered from strong winds from every direction.

For departure I used a tugboat to pull us out as the afternoon wind, from the South West, blew the ship towards the dock and also I wanted to avoid that I had to twist too heavily with the engines while in shallow waters. When you apply the engines full to create flow on the rudders, to off set the wind, you also create a sort of squat and in very shallow waters that is never a good idea. Under the guidance of the local pilot, who happened to be an ex Carnival Cruise Ship officer and a reader of my blog, we went astern to deeper water and there swung the ship around. By 19.00 hrs we started our crossing through the Ionian Sea to the North East, heading for the Adriatic Sea.

It should be a sunny but windy day tomorrow as there is a strong southerly flow coming down from the Venice area.