13 July 2009, Newport, Wales.

With cruising being so popular and the well known ports filling up with the ever larger cruise ships, Holland America is very active in developing new cruise destinations and ports of call. One of the issues with visiting Wales is that it is a great country but not so easy to access. Also the country is quite long; running from North to South and you need several access ports to get guests within reasonable distance to the attractions. There are several ports available but they are not so large and are mainly focused on the cargo trade. Thus the company developed the plan to call at Newport. As the river Severn which leads to Bristol has a very large tidal range, the ports along the shores are all protected from the tides by locks, so that inside the locks the docks have a constant water height. The lock at Newport is of the same size as the one in Leith 31.5 meters wide and that means that out of all the HAL ships, only the Prinsendam fits in. Hence our appearance today at the place.

With the rising tide we approached the pilot station of Newport, which is located at the town of Barry about 12 miles out. Here several pilot boats service all the ships destined for various ports along the banks of the river Severn. Once we had the pilot onboard we progressed with the speed of the tide up the river to arrive at the correct moment at the entrance of the locks so that there would be sufficient water over the lock sill (the threshold on which the lock door rides) to get into the lock. Everybody was suitably exited as they had never had a passenger ship here, not since 1905, when the lock and the docks were first constructed. Thus I had the privilege of having three pilots to comment on what I was doing. One on the bridge and one on each lock wall to advise the distances. The pilot, who took the ship up river, kept running to the bridge wing every 5 minutes which I considered odd until I realized the predicament he was in. With a cargo ship, the bridge is at the stern of the ship and so you can see the ship setting on the current by watching the bow. If you have never conned a cruise ship before, with the bridge near the bow, then you do not see the minute signs of the ship going off course. So he ran every so often to the wing to look at the stern, to see what the Prinsendam was doing. It gives the same indication, just backwards.

Just when I was three quarters in the lock with the ship, a squall came over and it started to blow so I had to let the ship lean against the dock wall. Up to then I had been able to stay 1 foot off the dock wall but with 25 knot winds on the beam that was not possible anymore. In Leith the dock had wooden fenders for the ship to rest on, here in this lock there was nothing. Only bare concrete walls. However they have the phenomena of “Fender man” here. On each side there are two gentlemen with pieces of wood on a rope. They walk along with the ship and hold the piece of wood between the ship and the lock wall in order to prevent paint damage to the ship. The Prinsendam has a heavy metal rubbing stroke running along the hull, so in this case it was more preventing damage to the lock wall than the other way around.

With the squall safely over, we proceeded out of the lock and that gave the next challenge. From lock gate to the opposite side of the dock is 250 meters. However the authorities had put a cargo ship at the corner and that brought it down to 235 meters……room to swing with the Prinsendam having a length of 204 meters. Room enough but not pleasant with the wind gusting all over the place. The lock is perpendicular to the dock basin, so each ship has to make a 90o swing to line up in the basin to get to its final dock. By the time we had docked torrential rain had started to come down, so it was a great experience.

Newport is plugging hard to get cruise ships in for visits and thus we had the Mayor, the port director, Tourism and the BBC onboard. Therefore I had to miss my daily blog entry as there was simply not enough time yesterday. Neither in the evening as departure, dictated by the high tide again, was set for 2100 hrs in the locks. It was just before midnight before I was off the bridge. Tomorrow we are in Falmouth, Cornwall. Arrival time is a decent 11:00 hrs in the morning so we can see the place by day light. However there is another gale warning going for around the Scilly Isles so it might be a windy arrival again.