Today was Friday the 13th, so all of us superstitious sailors were on the full alert. It is the birthday of Murphy and he likes to reinforce his laws on occasion. Thanks to a gift of one of the readers of this blog, we have Murphy’s laws hanging on the bridge and close attention is paid to keep Murphy away from navigating the ship. Murphy almost got a hand in by upsetting the traffic sequence under the Lions Gate bridge this morning, with a container ship coming out while the cruise ships wanted to get in but in the end it only cost us 10 minutes. We had the gangway out by 07.15 hrs. while the target time is 07.10 hrs.
I cannot do it faster, as we can only give the first mooring line ashore at 07.00:01 hrs. to avoid overtime penalties from the longshoremen. When you can to Vancouver from Deep-Sea, then you have to have regular linesmen that normally get paid for a four hour work window. If the ship arrives within those four hours, it is just the regular charge. If you are doing Alaska all summer, you are considered coastal and then the longshoremen that load the ships are allowed to handle the lines. They start working at 07.00 but are already on the docks just before but if we throw the first line ashore for 07.00 then we have to pay extra. That amount is considerable and so all the cruise ships aim to have their first line ashore right after 7 am. The chief officer looks at the GPS clock and at the appropriate time gives the green light. The deck officers fore and aft keep a close eye on the sailors with the lines, in case somebody’s name just changed to Murphy.
This sailing under the bridge is regulated by the pilots in close cooperation with Victoria Traffic which is a Vessel Traffic announcement system that covers this part of the coast.
Pilot talks to each other and figure out the safest way to go under the bridge. If ships are approaching the bridge from both sides at the same time, then the pilots set up the best transfer times. A ship that is running with the current has the first choice, as that ship has more problems coming to a standstill if necessary. If more ships are inbound at the same time, then the ship that goes furtherest into the harbor goes in first. So on arrival Vancouver the Millennium which docks at Centerm/Ballentyne goes first because it has to go the furtherest. If there would be a ship that docks at Canada Place East, that would go second, followed by the Veendam as we dock at Canada Place west which is the dock nearest to bridge. The only exception is when a tanker or dangerous cargo barge is transiting. Then Victoria Traffic closes all traffic down until that cargo has safely passed the bridge. In this way a very small chance of a collision is reduced even further.
This morning we had a container ship coming out of the harbor with 3 knots of ebb current with it, so we all had to wait outside for that ship to clear the bridge and then we could move to the dock.
We dock starboard side alongside as it works better for the shore side operation. I prefer to dock noise in as I hate to turn the ships stern towards the rocks and the shallows at the end of the dock, but as we have the whole Westside to ourselves it is not such a big thing so I can stay about 200 feet away from the shallows. We hook two gangways in with this setup, the 2nd gangway is used for America-bound-guests who are bussed directly to the Vancouver airport for USA bound flights and they end up directly in the departure lounge. By sealing off this gangway part and the terminal, they stay inside the Canadian custom zone and are not considered to have landed in Canada and therefore do not need to see immigration. That speeds up the disembarkation process considerably and hence the request to the captain to park his ship the other way around to what makes sense for the casual eye.
Vancouver turned out to be a nice day, the first one they had in 14 days. It seems that when we left 14 days ago we took the sunshine with us and now brought it back again. Maybe not nice for the Vancouverians, but I will try to do this again for the coming cruise.
June 14, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Please take sunshine with ou – just leave some here! Your inside passage account sounded like February!
June 20, 2008 at 5:34 pm
My family has booked a cruise with Celebrity – Millennium. We will be arriving into Vancouver and then need to catch a plane to the U.S. Celebrity tells us that their transfer shuttles from the ship to the airport are full! Are there other easy options for travel to the airport? Does Holland treat their customers better than Celebrity?