21 July 2008, Skagway.

As explained before, Skagway is a blow hole, where the wind funnels up the Lynn Canal and gathers momentum when coming North of Haines and going through the most narrow part of the Canal. So every captain approaches Skagway with a certain trepidation as you never know what you will find on arrival. We docked with about 20 knots of wind on the stern and that is not bad at all for Skagway. In the course of the day, it started to blow harder and harder and by late afternoon wind gusts of up to 45 knots were measured. The great advantage was that the wind blew the rain clouds away and it was a sunny and dry afternoon.

We were docked this time at the Rail road dock and that had to do with the presence of an extra ship, the Dawn Princess. As she is on a 10 day cycle from San Francisco, she tends to upset the established procedures of the more regular – 7 day- callers. Apart from the Dawn we had the Infinity, the Rhapsody, the Empress of the North, ourselves and the ferry Malaspina. Normally on a windy day, the ships stern is pushed by the wind in a certain direction as our funnel acts as a large sail. This time on arrival, we were not set at all, as the current was very strong but opposite to the wind and they cancelled each other out. In this case 20 knots of wind on the funnel equaled three knots of current on the hull.

We had so much current because it was an extremely high and low tide today, nearly 18 feet between high and low. That meant that the ship was going up and down alongside the dock continuously and the gangway had to be shifted from one deck to the other on a regular basis. It also meant giving slack or tightening the ropes all the time. This is being done by the bo’sun together with the quartermasters who are on security patrol during the day. The bo’sun receives a tidal printout of the day and than regularly adjusts the mooring lines. Most lines are on drums, connected to the mooring winches and it is just a matter of pushing buttons. On windy days we put out extra ropes and those ropes have to be adjusted by hand.

The Veendam has four mooring winches forward and aft, so we can keep three head lines & three stern lines and two spring lines (one forward and one aft) directly connected to a winch. Today, due to the wind, we docked four and three forward and five and two aft. Three spring lines forward as we were docked very close to the Rhapsody of the Seas and five stern lines aft to avoid the ship being pushed forward by the strong wind. Thus these extra lines had to be adjusted manually each time by the Bo ‘sun and the quartermasters and with the big tidal range it was almost a full day job.

We can also put the winches on “self tensioning” This means that a winch will automatically pay out, if the tension on the rope becomes too much; or when the tide goes down and the ropes become slack, it will heave the line tight again automatically. We seldom use the system as it has the inherent danger that the ship “goes walking”. If a strong wind keeps pushing on the stern, there might be too much strain on the stern lines and the winch would pay out. Then the ship goes a little bit forward and the head lines go slack. Now the winch heaves the head lines tight and the process will start all over again. In the end you would then see the ship slowly moving along the dock for several meters. With a passenger gangway out that is not something you want to happen. So we do it manually and keep the ship in place.

With the strong wind, the waves started to build up and the whole afternoon we had this shuddering going through the ship; each time a large wave hit the hull just under the square stern of the Veendam, the ship would shake. That was the price we had to pay today for sunny weather. We left ahead of schedule as the Dawn Princess found it still too windy to depart and in the end they organized a tugboat. The Veendam is a much more maneuverable ship and we spun around in 35 knots of wind as if it was a wind still day.

That is what it is supposed to be tomorrow. Wind still weather in Juneau with a bit of early morning fog and that should mean a fairly dry day as well.