With the pedal to the metal the Volendam raced up the coast towards Seymour Narrows, to catch the early evening tide. This stretch of water which separates Vancouver Island from the mainland is called Georgia Strait. Named after an English King from the days of the British Empire. It has wide open waters and as it is just off Vancouver the banks and islands along the shore line are inhabited. Some with Holiday homes but some live there permanently with both active and retired people. Beautiful area to live in, as long as you do not mind the long trek to Vancouver. As a result there is a lot of water sport activity, varying from professional sailors to six-pack navigators for a one-off afternoon. Being a Wednesday ship means that there is a lot less activity than on a Saturday or a Sunday afternoon. A blessing in disguise for Captain, Pilot and Navigators.
We as cruise ship people like nice weather as it is good for the guests but sometimes we hope for a little, just a small one, bit of thunderstorm around 4 pm. to clear the sea before we depart. As it takes the worry away of having to focus on whether a boat is going to do nothing, going to do the right thing or going to do the wrong thing. We prefer of course that all boats do the right thing all the time, and that is to follow the Collision Regulations Rules for everything that floats. However it is not always the case. Some boaters do not even know the Rules and some have completely forgotten them after their 2nd or 3rd six pack of Dutch courage.
If boaters do not know exactly what to do then we prefer in general that they do nothing at all and we as the professionals will sail around them. The danger is always when they start doing the un-expected thing, such as crossing the bow of a large ship, right at the last moment. I have never understood the thinking behind this. A ship that is 800 feet long, comes charging by at 20 knots, so the time it takes to cross behind it instead of crossing the bow, does not make for much of a delay. I once put a stop watch on it. After a speed boat had crossed our bow, I clocked the time from the moment the bow passed its wake until the moment the stern passed the wake again and it was less than 90 seconds. Not much in the scheme of things. But they are out there……………. and we find them on a regular basis.
Getting through the Narrows early, helps with making it on time to Juneau, and having a bit of plus in the hand always helps. Also in this case, although the weather forecast had predicted that it would be calm all the way, there was a strong adverse wind blowing in Queen Charlotte Sound which whipped up the waves and made the ship move. Not much, but enough for a large Chinese contingent on board to be convinced that we were in a real storm. Photo and video camera’s all over the place trying to catch each white cap on the waves for posterity.
One can see that cruising is becoming popular worldwide. The guests on board our ships were always 99% American or Canadian in the past, that percentage is now going down to 70 or 80% and on some cruises even more. Europeans are getting into it and so are our friends from down under. Then with the Far East becoming more and more mainstream in politics and economics, large numbers of guests are coming from those areas as well.
As a result cruise companies are now starting to cater for these area’s and Royal Caribbean and Costa offer Chinese only cruises from the main ports in China. Star Cruises from Singapore has been doing that for a long long time, but their emphasis has always been on the gambling angle, and less on the pure – part of it.
Holland America is making it’self available to that clientele as well and while I was in the office, I came across a HAL brochure in Chinese. Until now I had never seen one before and I will have find out if there were any published in the previous years. Something to get used to, seeing a photo of a cabin steward happily smiling towards a Caucasian couple and that all surrounded by Chinese characters, no doubt extolling the virtues of a cruise in the East Mediterranean.
Tomorrow we are in Juneau and it will be 4th. of July. That means that there is normally a Parade and that means they block off the roads. I remember running a tender service all the way up to the small boat harbor to get the tours back some years ago, as the tour busses could not get back to down town. Luckily we are arriving in the early afternoon and thus the parade should be finished by then.
July 7, 2014 at 8:57 pm
Regarding the traffic crossing the bow of large ships, I have even seen a waterplane taking off right alongside the Volendam who was already moving towards midstream of the Burrard inlet! I believe the Captain leaned on his ship’s horn 5 times ….(?)
It is very noticeable that there is an increase in guests from China, Captain. Years ago the company I worked for wanted to shut down offices in Vancouver and move them more in-land. The suggestion box got filled with protestations, and one of them was mine claiming that Vancouver was a gateway for people from the Orient. It so happened that the Orientals are now literally flooding the city of Vancouver with group travel from mainland China. It was not difficult for them to find out that there were some fancy cruise ships in the downtown harbour of Vancouver. And, here they are, filling up the decks during the lifeboat drills at the muster stations.