15 August 2013; Skagway, Alaska.

A whole line of mighty ocean liners glided serenely towards the Promised Land. In this case Skagway. During the night the ships had all lined up in their required position so that they could all dock at their assigned berth without hindering somebody else. First in was the Island Princess who had to go all the way forward on the Railroad dock. Once she was out of the way, the Golden Princess came in, who decided to swing on arrival and dock with her nose out . That makes for a quicker departure but sometimes the reason is because the Staff Captain wants to paint the other side of the ship. Skagway is blessed with some nice docks and the cherry picker company there makes good money with renting out four or five cherry pickers each day when there are ships in. The next one was your Statendam, destined for the Broadway dock and last was the Disney Wonder. She was going to the Ore dock and had to wait as you cannot get at the Broadway dock if there is a ship already docked at the Ore dock. The opening left is simply too small. By 07.30 all the ships were in place and thousands of eager tourists could stream ashore and invade the town of Skagway and its surroundings.

The Statendam on Broadway dock in the front and Princess ships at the Rail road dock in the back. To the right of the Statendam the crane of the Ore dock conveyor belt is just visible.

The biggest highlight of the town is the train ride. Which follows the trail of 1896 with the gold rush in the Klondike. In the years before tourism the trains were mainly used to bring ore down from the interior to the Skagway ore dock where it was loaded onto the bulk carriers. This still happens but it is not that frequent anymore. Instead the ever increasing cruise tourism gave a real boost to the train business and now it is one of the highlights of Skagway. With four ships in, we saw three long trains rolling towards the three docks. It looked like that the Princess ships were sharing a train as it was a lot longer than the others. Ours parked right in front of the ship and the one for the Disney Wonder could come close as well, using the Ore train tracks. It was the perfect day for it, sunny with temperatures in the mid-sixties.

Those not going on the trains had ample options for our tours and other diversions, plus the ever present opportunity for shopping. Unknown to most cruise guests, there is a whole camping area in the valley behind the town where throughout the summer sales attendants live who man the shops during the summer season. Some of them are students making some vacation money but quite a few are professional sales people who come from shops in the Caribbean and who follow the cruise ships north. All of them together make the population of Skagway swell from 400 in the winter to 800 in the summer. Maybe a bit unusual to see a Puerto Rican or Columbian sales attendant in a town which is part of frontier history but tourism is a global business nowadays.

My interest is always about the wind. Skagway is located at the northern end of Llyn Canal and as this fjord is almost due North-South it acts as a proper wind funnel. Because it tapers towards the end, the wind starts to increase in velocity as soon as it starts to blow. It is called the Venturi effect and there is no better proof for it than Skagway harbor. Indeed I was not let down in my expectations and by 3 pm. the wind started to pick up and reached 30 knots by 5 pm. with sometimes gusts to 45 knots. The ships at the Railroad dock are nicely in the lee of the mountain but the Statendam at the Broadway dock gets the full blast of it. As Broadway dock is an extension of Broadway Street, it means that those walking up and down the main shopping street get the full enjoyment as well. 40 knots is not that much in the scale of things. Most captains have experienced higher winds than that. The record hovers around about 90 knots, in the summer. No doubt in the winter it might even be worse.

We left at 20.45 after the Island Princess had swung away from the dock and we backed out (went astern) with winds of up to 35 knots. As that wind is full on the stern, it does not affect the ship that much. Danger to cruise ships is wind on the beam as that causes drifting.

Tonight we will sail southbound through Lynn Canal again and then tomorrow morning at 07.00 we are at the Glacier Bay Ranger Station, to collect the National Park Rangers for a day of sightseeing in the Bay.