29 June 2008, Ketchikan.

The 50% rain must have fallen somewhere else as it was a sunny and nice day. We were lucky; two days earlier the rain clouds had dropped 10 inches of rain in one day resulting in a lot of un-happy campers returning early to the ships that were in Ketchikan that day. We have had now quite a few sunny Ketchikan days this season, about 5 and with the season not yet half way through we must start to run out of our allotted quota. On average Ketchikan only has 33 completely dry days in the year and not all of them are in the summer.

All three ships arrived nicely on schedule at the pilot station, the Millennium at 04.30, going to dock nbr 2., followed by the Veendam going to dock nbr 1., followed about 25 minutes later by the Dawn Princess going to dock nbr 3. Which is the new city dock. Ship one and ship three both had a female pilot on board (they have three of them at SEPA pilots) and we were sitting with the male pilot in the middle. It just sounded so funny to hear first a female voice calling out a security call, then a male voice and then a female voice again. All about 30 minutes apart when each ship arrived at a security call point.

Security call points occur quite regularly, normally when there is blind corner coming, or when two fairways are converging or diverging. The pilot then announces on VHF channel 16 and 13, where he/she is and what he/she is planning to do. In Alaska there is not so much traffic that there are always responses but in the Canadian Inside Passage with its large amount of barge traffic there are constant answers to the pilots call. The Canadians also have a Vessel Traffic system where most ships report to, so the Canadian pilots more or less know who is coming when and where. There is not such a thing in Alaskan Waters mainly because the traffic is much less and the fairways with not as many tight bends. Thus the pilot just relies on his Security calls and nowadays also on the AIS transponders which give the name and position of another ship on the radar.

Sometimes these calls on the VHF create confusion or strange reactions, if there are more of the same ships in the area such as fishing boats. Sometimes the wrong ship answers, or any ship answers. The most interesting one I was presented with, was when a fishing boat responded to a call because he THOUGHT he was at the location mentioned by the pilot during his call. So the pilot asked where he was and he responded near a big red buoy. That really did not help matters very much of course but after a few minutes he started to describe a big lighthouse about 5 miles away. That, said the pilot, is Cape Decision light house. After a few moments of deadly silence, the query came back, that is the lighthouse near the Pacific Ocean isn’t it. Yes it is. Some profanity filled the airwaves and we saw the fishing boat suddenley making a 360o course change and heading back where he came from. Obviously he had been going completely in the wrong direction. The dangerous thing was that the boat just turned around without letting anybody know he was going to do that. In England we say: “Some mothers do hav’em”.

This morning we only had the State Ferry Columbia coming by but he took the other approach to Ketchikan, so the three cruise ships continued their slow approach to the Ketchikan docks unhindered. We opened up the gangway at 07.05 for a sunny day ashore.

We also sailed on time and we are all hoping for some wildlife sightings at Snow Passage this evening. Tomorrow we are in Haines and the weather forecast is 50% showers again.