Boston offers quite a scenic ride in but as a guest you only see it once; on the way out. Early morning arrival means that it is barely twilight and then it is difficult to make anything out.
To the top right you can still see in Boston the frames used to help loading and unloading the cargo ships
The Pier that we are docking at is the Black Falcon Terminal which used to be one of the larger cargo piers in the port. Holland America used to dock there already in the days of the old freighters. You can still see the steel poles on top of the building that were used to hook up steel wires with blocks so the cargo could lifted out of the hold onto the pier and vice versa in a faster way than using the ships derricks. Since the cruise ship boom the Pier has been spruced up to make it passenger friendly but it could do with a major overhaul to get it up to modern times, especially as in the high season there can be three cruise ships in at the same time.
It is not the biggest whale in the world but not small either
As said the trip in or out is quite scenic. It starts with a bit of a headache for the Navigators due to the presence of the Right Whale. It has one of its major habitats just outside the port. There are only about 300 left in the world and thus they are heavy protected. The USCG maintains a traffic post especially for them (compulsory as well) and as soon as a ship reports in that they have seen a Right Whale near the shipping lanes, all alarm buttons are being pushed and the locations reported in, are broadcast on regular intervals to the whole shipping world. There are speed restrictions and from our side we all have received “Whale avoidance” training that takes into account how various species of whales react and behave.
Mother and Calf. Most Right Whales are completely oblivious of what goes on around them.
That makes it here a bit scary as the Right Whale does not behave. It does not react to ships, not to vibrations, not to movement; it does its own thing and nobody has a real clue what that is. As a result they were easy prey in the past and nowadays they are easy to get a collision with. Hence the USCG having a sort of Traffic Control system in place to warn and guide the ships around them.
Once past that area the ship sails into Boston Harbor. On one of the hills on the south side you can see a prominent building what once was a mental hospital. It is now not in use as such, but every time I see it I have to wonder why they would build something like that on such a prominent position. It could not have been very peaceful for the patients inside to see the whole world around them and then not be able to get to it. Then you get, also on the south side, the Fort that protects Boston Harbor. From the ship high up, you can basically look over it and see what the logic of fortification was in the 16th. and 17th. Century.
Then comes the bane of each cruise ship captains life, the container terminal. There is plenty of room to sail around the container cranes and the ships, but they for some reason tend to arrive and depart around the same time as we do. If not on arrival, then it is in the afternoon. As the Cruise Terminal is behind the container terminal it means that if one of those Container Vessels is maneuvering it effectively blocks the whole area.
Today that happened on departure. By 16:15 the ms Maasdam was all ready to go with 1,233 happy campers on board, which means a full house, and then they started moving a containership around. So we were all delayed by a good 30 minutes. Luckily Bar Harbor is not that far away, so the loss of time can easily be absorbed in the schedule. And as sunset was later in the evening, everybody could enjoy a nice sail- away. The ships Bars were full which made the Bar Staff very happy.
Tomorrow we are in Bar Harbor again; the good thing is that there is no immigration inspection this time and thus no delay in the early clearance of the ship. The bad part is the ship has been assigned the North Anchorage which is wide and more in the open but results in a longer tender distance. The south anchorage has been given to one of the “Apartment of the Seas” of RCI which will deliver close to 4,000 guests ashore during the day.
The weather forecast calls for sunny weather but windy, with other words a regular Bar Harbor day with great sailing weather.
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