23 April, Rhodos.

The island of Rhodos, also spelled Rhodes or Nissos Rodos is located just a few miles South of the Turkish mainland. As a matter of fact you can see the Turkish mountain ranges quite clearly from the town. The port of Rhodos is located on the most North Eastern tip of the island and situated there it controls the entrance to the Strait of Rhodos through which most of the East-West traffic goes in this part of the Mediterranean Sea. Through the ages many countries have coveted control of the island and the town and as a result there are numerous fortifications and a big castle. The old city walls are still in tact adding an extra attraction to a very pretty area.

For the sailor the port can be less pleasant. It is fully exposed to the North West and Eastern winds and it nearly always blows from one direction or the other. Approaching the port is very simple. It is a basic North South course straight in line with the dock. The pilot boards 1 mile north of the dock and brings with him two or three tugboats. It looks a bit silly to see tug boats hurrying around the hull of the Veendam as the ship has so much power in the thrusters. But it seems that too many a ship refused tugboat help in the past and crashed into one of the piers and therefore tugboat assistance is compulsory. A secondary reason is that the port authorities are afraid that the powerful thruster wash of the modern cruise ships will undermine the strength of the dock. Some of the docks are rather ancient with the original construction going back 500 years or more and these docks where definitely not built with the modern cruise ships in mind.

Talking about the thrusters. In the old days the ships just had one or two propellers which moved a ship forward through the seas. In each port tug boats would come out and would help with the docking or undocking of the ship by pulling it in the right direction. In the 70’s electric motors where so far developed that propellers could be installed in the bow and used for bringing the bow in. That meant that ship owners could reduce the cost of tugboats in each port and also could send ships to ports where there were no tugboats available or could have ships docking in ports where before anchoring had been the only option before. The ship now carried its own tugboat in the bow. The technic was improved upon through the years and by the late 80’s it was a standard part of the outfitting of most ships. At the same time the stern thruster was introduced which now made it possible to move the ship bodily sideways, giving captains the option to park the ship in very tight spaces. I have docked in Italian ports with about 10 feet of clearance forward and approx. 15 feet aft with a ships length of 720 feet and it was not a big deal.

The cruise ships were of course the first to implement all these new gadgets as it made it possible to bring the ships to ports and area’s where no cruise ship had gone before. The Veendam has two bow thrusters and one stern thruster and when I also use both rudders I can sit still with the ship with a 25 knot wind on the beam. The latest generation of cruise ships have azipod propulsion. These are pods that hang under the ship and the propeller is connected to that pod. By rotating the pod, the propeller can push the ship in any direction you can think of. It handles in a similar way as an outboard motor on a speedboat. Having Azipods means that you do not need rudders or stern thrusters anymore as everything is combined in the pod.

Apart from the cruise ships, many cargo ships now have thrusters as well and thus there is a lesser need in the ports to have tugboats on standby. That puts the port authorities in a bit of a quandary as they want tug boats to protect the port for the case of but economically they are not viable anymore as the ships do not need them and do not request their help anymore. The only option left then is making tug boat use compulsory in some of the ports.

And thus we had to have tug boats in Rhodos to bring us alongside and the pull us off on departure. We were docked with the bow almost in the old town. It was about a 1000 yards to get to the city walls and to walk into the old town from the gangway. The port has not changed much from the old days. They have added through the years an outer breakwater pier but that is mainly for cargo ships and ferries, as they try to dock the cruise ships on the old docks to reduce the walking distance to the town. Two old forts once protected the entrance to our dock and from the bridge wing I could look directly into the watch tower of one of them. We were once again blessed with a beautiful sunny day, with temperatures around 70 and that made it just pleasant for sightseeing.