The wind went away and the gentle breeze that was left moved accordingly to plan to the South. However the swell remained. These two Gales that had been developing and intensifying east of Monte Carlo, yesterday and the day before yesterday, where enhanced by a South Westerly flow that moved between the east side of the Spanish mainland and the Balearic Islands off the coast. So the swell had been well sustained in the past two days and was not dying off as quickly as expected and forecast. At the same time it was breezing up again near Menorca and thus they would not get lower very quickly. Although the swells did not look that high, as seen from the bridge, experience told me that what I saw did not look good. However one can only be certain in cases like this, when you are actually at the location where you are going to and then carefully observe the situation. So I brought the ship in position at anchorage A, off the harbour entrance of Alghero. This port has an opening to the North so the inside is sheltered from the swell from all directions. The breakwater protects it from NW, West and SW. and the land from the North, East and South. The problem is that the area directly to the North of the port entrance is very shallow and can only be used for anchoring ships with a draft less than 4 meters. The Prinsendam with its 7.2 has to stay further out, outside the 10 meter line. The port authority has established 3 anchorages for this purpose, A, B, and C and we were allocated A, because it was the nearest one and also because we were the only ship.

So I hovered in location A, about 6 cables, roughly 4000 feet away from the Harbour entrance to see what the swell looked like over here. That anchorage is just outside the line of a Cape further to the South, hence we have did not have any lee there what so ever. The Chief Officer went down to the tender breaks and opened up the doors and observed 3 to 5 feet and sometime more swell coming by. I could make some lee at one side but not at the other. The 2nd problem was that the tenders would have to buck into these waves on the return from the port, after leaving the shelter of the breakwater and before coming into the shelter of the Prinsendam. Even with going at slow speed, the tenders would pitch violently while going against these heights. That would result in sea sickness and probably injuries. We would not be able to run a safe tender service here, so there was only one solution. The call at Alghero had to be cancelled.

Cancelling a call under these circumstances is one of the most difficult ones for a captain to explain to the guests. For a non nautical person it looked perfect. The sun was rising in a spectacular way over the mountains, there was no wind or rain to be seen and from the breakfast table high up in the Lido, the waves did not look that high at all. 5 feet is not that much when seen from 75 feet up in the air, but it is a lot when you are sitting in a 10 feet high tender………….

So another day at sea and a nice one at that as the sun shone all day. Around 11 am the wind started to increase again and if we had stayed it would have hit us right at the anchorage, and that would have caused even more problems with getting the guests back. As explained yesterday, deviating to another port was out of the question as harbour masters at ports nearby do not take bookings during the weekend.

Tomorrow we will be in Barcelona and the weather will be a mixed bag when we arrive with overcast skies and a chance of showers. However later on the sun is supposed to come out for a bright afternoon. I will be at the pilot station at 06.30 and docked an hour later at one of the new passenger terminals in the outer harbour. We are staying two days, much to the delight of the crew.