25 June 2008, Ketchikan.

During the night we had the real first fog of the season. Very low clouds in combination with drizzle and rain. So between 3 and 6 am. the Veendam’s fog horn sounded through the inside passage reminding everybody that we were around, even if we could not be seen. It required my presence on the bridge and unfortunately it adds more hours to an already very long day. But safety comes first so there we were. Last cruise the fishing season opened and that meant fishing boats in some of the area’s that we cruise through.

There was one fishing opening North of Snow passage and so we had a few this morning. Not too many, as explained before, the good days of fishing are gone but still a number of boats around that can make life interesting. No exception this morning, all the fishermen were to the North and South of the steamer track; except one. There is always one that sits in the way. I do not know if they attend a special school for that but somehow it works out that there is always one boat that is making your life difficult. Luckily for him we could see the end of his net and sail around it. Apart from sitting in the way, he also not did not do what he had to do as well; listen out on the VHF for the ships security calls and keep the nose of his boat in the direction of the net so we could see where it was and avoid it. When we passed by, we saw the two fishermen on the aft deck happily paying out their net and being totally oblivious of the potential danger that they were in of loosing the net. The fact that the fog had just lifted made it all a lot easier to avoid the net otherwise it could have been a costly affair for them.

The town of Ketchikan prides itself in being the “rain” capital of the world. Although there are a few towns in the Amazon forest who could probably argue about that, however it is true that it rains here most of the time. For today the weather forecast had been rain in the morning and clearing up in the afternoon and it turned out that the weather forecast was quite accurate this time. All the reason to be happy as a dry day in Ketchikan is a great gift.

The Amsterdam occupies our berth for a morning call and a timely docking of the Veendam depends on the on-time departure of that ship. At the same time the Celebrity Infinity is departing and that makes arrival a very interesting happening. Thus I plan my arrival in such a way that I am sitting in position off the stern of the Infinity about 15 minutes before the departure time of the two ships. The moment they move out, the Veendam moves in. Both ships are in a hurry to get away as they have a tight sailing schedule to get to Victoria on time and that helps me with keeping my scheduling of docking on time.

This time it did not go as smoothly as I hoped for. A tour from the Amsterdam was delayed in returning and thus the ship had to wait. The Infinity was on time but was supposed to wait for the Amsterdam. So both ships were stalling. After a while the Infinity pulled out, while the Amsterdam was still waiting for the gangway to be hooked out. With the Infinity gone I could continue to creep closer to the dock and in that way reduce the time needed to come alongside. In the end the Amsterdam left 10 minutes late. The moment they were clear, the Veendam moved in. Both pilots that had been with us for the last few days, found this a very interesting happening as, hot-berthing as it is called, does not take place every day. Somebody on the shore side called it the “dance of the cruise ships”. Maybe the ships are a big too big for dancing but with three ships moving at the same time in the harbor it was an interesting spectacle.

In the end I was only 5 minutes later than last cruise but still 15 minutes ahead of time. We had the gangway out by 13.45 hrs and 30 minutes later a 1000 people where ashore. That made it time for me to go to bed. The weather forecast for tomorrow is to be a windy day, but I hope to be under the coast of Vancouver Island before the swells start to build up.