11 May 2008, Juneau.

I could only fool Mother Nature partially. By going inside I did manage to give all our guests a quiet night without the ship moving. However the currents were all the way against us from the moment we neared the Pilot Station at Ketchikan until we docked at Juneau. That meant loosing one to two knots each hour. Apart from that, the slow down for transversing Snow Passage cost me time as well. Thus in the end we docked 1.5 hours late in Juneau.

Even on this inside run, I had to dip into the Pacific Ocean for about an hour and between 6 and 7 am in the morning, the ship started to pitch and move about while we made the turn into Chatham strait. During the night the waves had abated a little bit, instead of 18 feet waves it was now down to about 14 feet but that was still very unpleasant even for the short spell that we felt it. Arriving late in Juneau is not too much of a problem as it gets dark quite late and we could simply move all our tours up in time and everything that the guests wanted to do was still possible including shopping as the shops do not close until about 10 pm.

Still it was better to be late and not to be sea sick than to be late and to be sea sick. I think all the guests agreed with me on this one as not a single complaint was received. Especially our large Aussie contingent on board was quite happy as “they had not come to Alaska all the way, just to puke all over it”. At least that was the way one of the gents described it.

The docking was one of the more interesting ones as the cruise terminal dock was occupied by the Celebrity Millennium and that meant that there was just enough room left for me to park the Veendam at the Alaska Steamship dock. Normally arrival times are arranged in such a way that the ship that has to go the deepest into the port goes first and then the rest follows. With an afternoon arrival that does not work of course and so I had about 800 feet of room to park a 720 feet ship.

Where ships dock depend on various issues. First of all there is the number of passengers onboard. The Millennium being the biggest one was thus allocated the Cruise terminal as then most passengers could enjoy the floating ramp and did not have to be involved in steps, steep ramps and changing gangway locations. The Dawn Princess was docked at the Franklin terminal. This is a 10 minute walk to down town. All Princess ships go there, as Princess paid (partly as far as I know) for the construction of this dock. They also have the gangway hassle there. Ships less then 800 feet in length go to the Alaska Steam dock, which is the best dock for access to the town but there is also the hassle with the gangways because of the tides.

There is one more dock, the A.J dock, which was constructed about 4 years ago. It is meant to accommodate the mega liners but is a long ways from town and most guests use a shuttle service to get to town. It has a floating pontoon in the middle and so there is no hassle with the gangway because of the tide but it is a long ways out. On average most guests are quite happy with having to wait for a relocation of a gangway while the ship is docked at Alaska Steam as the main shopping area and the Red Dog Saloon are straight across from the gangway.

I extended the port stay in Juneau so that the guests had the option to still spend the lost time of the late arrival in the town after dinner. About 200 did so. The crew was very happy about this as well, as it gave most of the cabin and dining room stewards the option to run ashore for an a hour after service finished.

We departed by following the Dawn Princess out, who had an earlier departure time. The Millennium was already long gone. During the night we will overtake the Dawn Princess as tomorrow we are scheduled to dock ahead of the Dawn at the same dock in Skagway. She will be leaving earlier that evening and thus will dock behind us, facilitating an easier departure.

For those who asked who is who in the photos yesterday and last cruise Glacier Bay: Captions have been added with the names.