11 September 2007, Boston.

Well, nature was not to be denied and at 1 am the fog settled over the water. Good dense fog, we could hardly see the mast on the bow 120 feet away. The route from Newport to Boston is mainly via Traffic Separation Schemes, which are a sort of highways on the sea. That means that deep sea traffic is not a problem for sailing in the fog as long as everybody keeps to the system and follows the tracks, called traffic lanes, printed in the navigation chart. This then only leaves the fishing boats to content with as they tend to ignore the traffic lanes as they seem convinced that those area’s are the most perfect places to fish.

These traffic separation schemes are set up by local authorities, such as the USCG and are then formalized under IMO rules (International Maritime Organization). If you travel by deep sea ship from New York to Boston, you can sail all the way by following one of these routes. Your can stay out them as well by sailing closer to the coast, or going further out to sea. But the routes are set up in such a way that it provides, on average, the safest passage and most deep sea ships do follow them. We followed the route all the way around Nantucket, which has a sort of round-a-bout for ships coming from different directions, and ended up right outside the Boston pilot station.

The approach route to Boston has been recently changed in order to protect the Right Whale. This Whale is one of the most endangered whales in the world. It is estimated that there are no more than about 300 of them left and near Boston is one of the area’s where they tend to congregate. They seem to be more prone to be hit by ships than other whales so extensive measures have been taken to make them safe in their habitat. A whole area is indicated in the chart where they could be and when entering this area, the ship has to send an email to a monitoring station: giving the ship’s particulars, speed and intended route.

In the fog you can not see them of course but when in the early morning the fog lifted for a short time, we saw two of them nearby. Then there is a protocol to follow, that consists of slowing down to 13 knots or less, trying to steer away from them and trying to anticipate their next move. If you are completely uncertain about what they are going to do, stop the ship and wait until they have moved on. All bridge personnel on Holland America ships, from the captain down to the quartermaster-look-out on the bridge, have been trained in recognizing the various kinds of whales and what to look for when they are sighted. In this case we only had to slow down, giving the whales time to move away from our intended track. They seemed totally oblivious of our presence.

When Right Whales are sighted, we have to send in a report, with the location of the sighting and so we did. 15 minutes later the USCG made a security announcement to all shipping in the area to keep a sharp look-out for these whales while traversing the same area.

We picked up the pilot in dense fog and slowly sailed into Boston harbor. The fog only lifted after we made the final turn into the berthing area. While turning into the berth, we passed by the SW runway of Logan International Airport. Before we got there the ships pilot called Airport Traffic Control and advised them that we were on the way. Airport Traffic control then advises the approaching planes that there is a ship in the way and that they have to stay a little bit higher up than they otherwise might have planned to do. Our funnel reaches to about 140 feet above the water so a safe clearance of 160 feet is passed on. In the fog the ship can not see plane and plane can not see the ship, so it was quite interesting to hear a big 747 roaring over the ship during our approach without any visuals at all. We had a rainy day in Boston but the frontal system is moving out of the way and better weather has been predicted. But if it gets sunny, then we get even more fog…….