And indeed there was a low running swell coming across from the Pacific which made the Statendam gently ride on the waves. Although for some guests they might not have called it gentle if it was a completely new experience to them. Still it was a gentle motion and not bad at all for the Gulf of Alaska. What started off as a murky day with no wind, turned into a very sunny day with a stiff breeze in the afternoon. However by the time that this stiff breeze could whip up the waves sufficiently and make the ride rougher, the ship was coming under the lee of the land and going around the corner heading towards Cook Inlet.
Anchorage is located all the way up Cook Inlet necessitating an approx. 10 hour pilot time to get there. It is as the crow flies not that much more to the north than Seward where Holland America calls with the Zaandam but unfortunately there is land, with a mountain range in between called the Kenai Peninsula and you have to sail around that. On the other side there are more mountains, called the Alaska Range and in between is a 180 mile long inlet called the Cook Inlet. Captain James Cook surveyed the area in 1774 but it was his then time assistant captain George Vancouver who came back in 1878 and named the fjord after his former ship’s master. He also named what now is the city of Vancouver after himself. Vancouver was from Dutch descent as his family had emigrated from Holland to England some time before and came from the town of Coevorden. So they styled themselves Van Coevorden (Van = means coming from in Dutch) and it had got anglicized to Vancouver.
Cook Inlet. I pulled this chartlet from a geological site. The little named triangles are Volcano observation stations.
Due to the fact that cruise ships have to sail around the Kenai Peninsula when coming from Vancouver or the USA means that fewer cruise ships call here. The port gets a fair amount of cruise ship calls but as a port of call during a longer cruise but not as a turn over port during a regular 7 or 10 day Alaska Cruise. The Statendam cruise can make it here as Anchorage is scheduled as part of the 14 day cycle. But for a 7 day up and 7 day down it does not work unless you forgo another port in the cycle to create the time needed for sailing up Cook Inlet. The sailing around the Kenai Peninsula just takes too long. Thus Anchorage is mainly a cargo port for container ships and barges and it is the largest cargo entry port for Alaska. In 2010 only 13 cruise ships called here against over 300 cargo ships. Of those 13 calls, it was the Amsterdam who made 75% of them during the summer season.
But we have to get there first, and that meant pedal to the metal from Icy Strait Point across the Gulf, around the southern tip of the Kenai Peninsula and then up Cook Inlet. As it is inland waters it is a pilotage area and the ship was aiming for a pilot pick up shortly before 10 pm. Two pilots are taken on board as the average transiting time for the 160 miles under pilotage is about 10 hours. If you have the (strong) current with you, then it can be less, if it against you it can be more. Official arrival time for the ship is 08.00 hrs. and with a rule of thumb it means that the ship normally approaches the dock just after 7 am.
Basically you could see this run from the South East Alaska Inside Passage as a sort of highway at sea. The motorway starts at Cape Spencer and if you select a North Westerly course you follow the coast on a straight line. First branch off is to go to Valdez /Prince William Sound , the 2nd one is to head for Seaward / Resurrection Bay and the 3rd one is for Anchorage / Cook Inlet. At all three entrances there are pilot boarding stations of the Southwest Alaska Pilot Association (SWAPA) whose pilots then come on board and guide the ship towards the final destination.
So tonight the pilots will board us off Homer, at the entrance of Cook Inlet, a port we will visit on the way down from Anchorage and we then will sail all the up the Cook Inlet.
The weather for tomorrow looks really good, sunny with temperatures in the high fifties maybe touching the low sixties.
July 20, 2015 at 5:34 pm
Great information. A group of us from Cruise Critic are following your posts with great interest as we will be on the ship for the July 27th sailing. Hope you can look in on our Meet and Greet, Tuesday July 28th 10 am in the Crow’s Nest. We would love to meet you. Actually I sailed with you on the Veendam to the Amazon some years ago.
July 21, 2015 at 12:14 pm
Thank you for reading my blog
and welcome on the good ship Statendam. I will certainly try to make it to the Crowsnest. I am giving fire fighting training that morning
on the aft mooring deck at 0900, so it will depend on how wet I am from all the water, in how fast I might make it up there.
Enjoy your cruise, I will still be on board until Anchorage 03 aug.
Best regards
Capt. Albert
July 22, 2015 at 11:52 pm
Love your blogs! You can’t imagine how pleased the folks are who sailed with you on previous cruises. So happy you will be with us on the July 27th Statendam’s Alaskan run. I believe we were on the sailing when you took over command of the Prinsendam in Fort Lauderdale. We sailed for 36 days all the way through the eastern and western Mediterranean to the Black Sea. What a wonderful experience that was! I will always remember your comment to me about the mega ships being just “floating apartment buildings with lots of balconies.”I agree wholeheartedly. I remember returning to the ship in Sinop, Turkey and thinking to myself what a beautiful ship she is.