Last evening, the first gale warnings started to come in over the weather radio for the area of Prince Edward Island and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Strong winds followed by rain were to come from the South East in the course of the day. There were two reasons for me to be concerned about this. One, because the winds were to come from the South East and thus blow straight into the harbor and two, we had to anchor instead of docking.

Charlotte Town is working very hard to get more cruise ships in especially during the autumn season. Thus after a number of years the townspeople had decided to rebuilt the dock so it could accommodate larger ships. Thus far anything longer than 500 feet was overhanging the dock with bow and stern and forced to put the ropes for and aft on mooring buoys. The completion of this upgrade has been delayed as, due to the late clearing of the ice in the spring time, the project started later then planned. This means that visiting ships can not dock at the moment but have to anchor. Completion of the dock is now set for sometime October.

The anchorages in Charlotte town are not very good, certainly not for larger ships. And for a town the size of Charlotte town the Veendam is a larger ship. One anchorage is located at the centre of where three rivers are coming together plus the current from the sea tide. That results in the ship constantly swinging around its anchor, continuously pushed one way or the other, depending on which of the four currents is the strongest at one given time. The second anchorage is right off the dock, so very close for the guests but the ship cannot swing freely around there. It has to remain lined up in the fairway. That means using thrusters all day long or the combination of bow and stern anchor. Southerly winds blow full on the beam there and if the wind is too strong, then the anchor drags and the ship is set upon the dock.

With the above in mind, I arrived at 6 am at the pilot station. The pilot came to the bridge and we discussed the expected weather, especially the moment that the wind would start to increase. We both agreed that this would happen before lunch time and that it would be very dangerous even to contemplate trying to anchor. So the pilot left again and I cancelled the port call. While we were hovering near the pilot station, the wind already started to increase from 12 to 20 knots, so it made good sense to leave as quickly as possible. We sailed back the way came in and by 11 am we measured peak winds of 50 knots on the anemo meter.

Because we now had an extra day at sea, there were no alternative ports in the area that I could have called at instead, the ship rode the waves very nicely and only white caps indicated the strength of the wind. The fact that the ship does not always move when the weather is bad, can make it very hard for a captain “to sell” his decision to the guests. Most guests relate bad weather to a greatly moving ship with everybody hanging on for dear life. So I made my announcement to all on board at 08.30 and hopefully everybody understood the situation. Later in the day, the sea’s got a bit higher, slowly being whipped up by the ever increasing wind and drizzle and fog appeared. So at least the weather now also looked bad.

This weather system is supposed to last until tomorrow afternoon and then it should get better. Tomorrow is a regular sea day and thus we have now two sea days in a row. For the guests there was a full day program made by the cruise director but extra activities. Tomorrow should be getting better, when we start entering the St Lawrence river. For the remainder of the day we will cross the SW part of the St. Lawrence bay.