Sometimes the authorities do not make the life of a captain easy. Last cruise we docked inside at the Matthey yard and that is nice for the guests as downtown is just around the corner. But for this cruise that was not possible, for unspecified reasons, and we had to go to the new Mega Pier nbr 2. Then last night the news came in that we had to go to Mega Pier 1.  Why, nobody knows as we are the only ship in port today.  We think it has either to do with the shop keepers or with very large ships going into the port, into the large harbor behind the entrance. But the officers on watch did not see anything major passing the bow. Also the agent was bemused and so we will most likely never know what deep thinking lied behind our final docking location. Luckily Mega Pier is not so much further out in distance than the walk around the port when you are docking inside and have to go over the bridge.

I got the chance to take this photo of the Zuiderdam to day as I photographed the dock for the company’s port database.

Thus in accordance with the port authority orders we docked just after 07.00 at the Mega Pier Nbr 1. and hooked two gangways up again to get the eager shoppers off. A few days ago I showed a photo of our happy quilters on board. Are we amazed that they were not quilting today??? Who can resist the bargains of Willemstad where the prizes are the best of all the ports on this voyage?

I was immerged today in drills and made a simulated attempt to put the Engine Room on fire. While the teams drill very much in standard locations so the primary skills remained honed, I take the chance normally to offer the ship something more out of the box.  An unusual location with a few un-foreseen pitfalls; which then require creative thinking from the teams under the leadership of the On-Scene commander. Today was no different and the challenge that the teams came across this time was that the hoses were too short. We have drawings and protocols for attacking each section of the ship with detailed listings of what you might come across (locked doors for example — do not forget the master key) and what would work best. But if you then suddenly turn things around and go against the established protocol then everything works the other way around………… or not.

This is the Electricians cable store in the engineroom on D deck starboard forward. Not much space.

Thus the attack plan has to be amended and the teams in this case had to add extra hoses as the normal route was not available and the team had to come from a longer distance. Then there is a 1,2,3 routine required. 1. We move as far as we can. Hose is too short.  2. Take a hose from another hose station nearby and move ahead of the first hose. 3. Now the team with the first hose is protected by the 2^nd hose and can depressurize their hose, add a section (about 35 feet normally), pressurize again and then bypass hose 2 again to continue the attack.

What is so difficult about this, is that it has to be done by teams in full battle gear with heavy gloves in tight spaces or narrow corridors. Everybody is on air with Scuba on and that reduces communicating considerably. The team leaders can talk via walkie talkie to each other and to the Commanders but not to all their team members and that communication is done with hand signals. So you are in a tight space, you wear heavy gear, you communicate with hand signals and you have to pull and relocate heavy hoses. I am therefore not always popular with the officers and crew but we prepare for real life situations.

Now why do not all the fire team members have Walkie Talkies so they can talk? It is done to keep the chatter and confusion down, if everybody starts talking. So all team-members channel their communication through their team leader.

Tomorrow we have a sea day and we will be on this notorious course when the ship does not roll, it does not pitch, it does this cork screw thing in between. How much we will get is a good question. For most of today the wind was very light but in the late afternoon it started to breeze up again. That will push up the waves again and hit us exactly under the wrong angle.

Who says that modern cruise ships can not be scenic. This is Megapier 1 and 2 during sunset. As we are now one happy family I can put the Carnival Vista and Crown Princess on my blog without much hesitation. I do not know who took the photo but it came courtesy of Capt. Ryan Whitaker (ms Maasdam)

Today we have the first of two sea days to get us back to Ft. Lauderdale. The first one will be used to cover the distance between Puerto Limon and Cuba and the 2^nd day, to sail North of Cuba up to Florida. The weather is improving, at least the rain has mostly disappeared, but there is a gale force wind blowing from the North East, a sort of turbo – trade wind – but as it coming from a slightly different direction than before, we have less swell. The swell system is sort of filling each other out and the ship sails a lot steadier than before. We still have the occasional wobble but not much to worry about.

Now for to sea days the ship has to provide enrichment, entertainment and diversion to the 2000 guests on board. The regular facilities will take care of some, the Lido is nowadays open all day and there are constantly guests present. The line for the ice cream parlor collided this afternoon with the line for the Pizza and spaghetti section. This should not be the case as the lines – line up – in opposite ways but somebody started queuing on the wrong side and then it rolls from there. It took the Lido manager some time to sort it out as nobody wanted to move the moment they were in the Food Line.

While in the past, the enrichment activities were mainly limited in the morning and a movie was the most that was happening in the afternoon, nowadays this has changed considerably. I started with the arrival of the Music Walk, introduced on the Koningsdam in 2016. Now all the larger ships have a variation of this on board. And with more performers on board, more activities can be scheduled.

Line Dancing in the BB King Show Lounge. Today they were learning “The Wobble”. I did not know it even existed but I suppose it is something you dance after a few drinks when everything wobbles a bit easier.

Looking at the program for this afternoon, we have: Afternoon movie, Wine tasting, Casino & shop activities, lecture by the Shore ex staff (now called EXC guides) in a dedicated area in the crows nest. Classical Matinee in the Lincoln Arts Centre, Line dance class, drinks mixing (and trying them….), Computer Class and America’s Test Kitchen.  For those who have withdrawal symptoms there is always Bingo at the end of the afternoon.

The Lincoln Art Center with the afternoon Matinee. Completely full, so full that the area behind it was full to overflowing as well.

Today the activities taper off a little bit at 1700 hrs. as it is formal night and first sitting guests need some time to spruce themselves up. 2^nd sitting guests tend to go for a quiet time in the cabin as they tend to hang out later in the ship. For those who do not need that, Happy Hour starts at 16.00 hrs.

Holland America has found out that our guests have in general a great interest in knowing more about whatever they come across. This sort of traveler is known in the industry as a globetrotter. Going everywhere and when doing that, wanting to understand why something is there when they see it. And thus the EXC lectures are always full (Dedicated area in the portside crows nest) Lincoln arts center is over- full as with the music comes a Q&A as was the case this afternoon and when we run the BBC nature experience where all the ships orchestra’s combined provide the underscore of the documentary shown, the Main Stage is full. (I have now watched it several times. The documentary’s you can watch as well at home, if you have a large 4K TV, but to have a live underscore by real musicians, is something totally different. Somehow Mahler’s – From the New World- sounds much more awesome in the ships show lounge than at home.

Who says that Holland America ships are boring inside, is far from correct with one exception, we do not do a Conga Line around the swimming pool at lunch time.

Nice to see. All the dark clouds are still near Costa Rica and only a few rain clouds around Jamaica. (Photo Courtesy, the Weather Channel)

So tomorrow is our second sea day. We are already on Florida time as the clocks went one hour forward last night.  During the 2^nd sea day we will sail through the Yucatan Channel and then turn North East at Cabo San Antonio and follow the Cuban coast up to Florida. Then we will also sail out of the wind and that should result in a wonderful last day at sea.

As you can see Puntarenas or Punta Arenas is half way up the Golfo the Nicoya. The current comes in and most of it will follow the east shore. But when it comes to the islands in the middle, the flow is distorted and calculations are of little use. So we look at the buoys and watch the drift.

Slack tide for docking in Punta Arenas was calculated for around 05.30 hrs. and thus the Westerdam was there at the precise moment making sure that as soon as the current fell away, she could go alongside. And then the current did not fall away, it diminished somewhat and thus a safe docking could be made but it needed all the power of the thrusters and the Azipods and the help of a tugboat to accomplish this. One hour later and the flood current was still running.  And that is what fills captains with dread every time they have to go here; you cannot rely on the predictions, not even the ones made by the most experienced pilot.  Get the timing or the estimation of the flow wrong and you have a dent or even worse. Due to the flow of water passing by and going further up the inlet and the option for the water to circle around further up the inlet, the currents are not straight forward in and out as with regular tides.

The water is shallow here so a long pier had to be built. It causes the water / current to flow freely under the pier and that is not nice for docking.

Luckily today we had very little swell and that saved the day. On occasion we could hear a bump under the stern when a low wave got caught under the transom but apart from a gentle sway along the dock, it was a nice and quiet day. It being the time of the season, we were blessed with the occasional rain shower but the positive side of this was that it brought down the temperatures. As with a sunny day it can be very HOT here as there is then normally no wind while the humidity remains high.

Punta Arenas is a small town so for the guests who do not go on an excursion, there is something to look at and maybe pick up a small souvenir. But most of our guests go on shore excursions here and quite a few of them on tours up to the capital of Costa Rica, San Jose, two hours’ drive up the mountain. I was there long time ago and visited the National Museum. I found it most interesting as it was a museum with bits of everything.  Including a six feet KNSM (Dutch company called Royal Boat in English) model of a small passenger ship called the Cottica in an original show case. To my horror they had it standing on a covered Verandah but not in a temperature controlled environment. I wonder if it is still there and survived the tropics. The maritime museum in Amsterdam would have drooled over it.

Another thing going on bellows decks. Medical were doing flu shots today. The company strongly encourages all crew to get their yearly shot, so the medical officers are holding several clinics during the cruise to get all 800 crew through.

While the guests were exploring Costa Rica, on board life continued. For those who remained behind were treated to the occasional announcement for testing the P.A system. An unpleasant intrusion but for safety we have to test all the speakers on the outside deck once a year in case we need them during an emergency. We use as many people as possible, by parking each one of them under a speaker so we can keep the number of announcements down but we had to “ding dong” a few times during the day as there are a lot of them. We always find one that has stopped working due to water ingress and then we repair and then have to test again.

Another activity I see every morning when I go for breakfast, yearly morning yoga. Now the question is, why are there only two guys participating and so many Ladies ??

Then there were more announcements at 10.15 hrs. as Yours Truly was running a Fire drill. This time only the captain was aware of it, as once a month we have to stage an un-expected one as the law makers have recognized that too much routine for the crew is not good. We are human and if we can prepare for a drill, mentally (thinking about a fire scenario in advance) and physically (already on standby for the time scheduled) then you lose your edge. Thus once a month there is an un-expected one and if I am on board then it is really un-expected as nobody knows what I might come up with.

Leaving Punta Arenas was easy to day, the tide was again off schedule but very weak and thus we could just push the ship off the dock and sail out of the bay. Tomorrow we are in Corinto Nicaragua, where we are scheduled to arrive at 10.00 hrs.

Weather for Corinto sunny in the morning rain in the late afternoon. No wind and temperatures around

83oF or 28oC with high humidity.

Today we sailed along the North West coast of California, following the coastline at a distance of about 12 miles but sometimes coming closer when the coast line bulged out. There is one area where this really happens; we call it Isla Cedros and here the Mexican coast makes a sharp angle before it more or less continues straight to Cabo Falso. We could see the coast line for most of the day as it was a reasonably clear day, which is not always the case as we are now in the area where we go from the northern cooler weather to a more tropical scene.

This is one stretch of sailing that I have always marveled about. The length of this part of Mexico which we call California. Due to the Mercator projection of the maps of the world, the USA and Canada look a lot bigger than Mexico. In square miles it is but when traveling up and down the coast it is a different story.  Most of us when we look at atlases and sea charts look at the Mercator projection. Invented by a Dutch / Flemish Gentleman called Mercator (that was his Latin name) and dreamed up to give the sailors of the world a chart that was easy to navigate on.  What it does it is to ensure that the nautical mile that we use for going around the world is always correct for the chart that we use. Most of our sea charts only cover a small area, as we need detailed charts which indicate all the sea depths, and then the distortion on a larger scale does not matter.  But if you put all these charts together then you would get the world map as we know it.  And then the picture of the world is not correct.

The world as we are taught to see it. I always thought Greenland was very big……….

Greenland appears larger than Africa, while Africa is 14 times bigger. Africa looks about the same size as Europe but it is 3 times bigger. Same Alaska versus Brazil, Brazil is five times larger than Alaska. But by using a Mercator projection, the top and the bottom of the world is stretched out and that makes it look a lot larger. So good for sailors but not good for understanding the world.  A solution was known for a long time to this, but never gathered much momentum as it was politically quite convenient to see a lot of colonies and other lesser countries “to seem to be a lot smaller than those of the established powers”

A more logical projection for understanding the real size of the countries of the world started to be promoted in the mid 1980’s. It is now commonly known as the Gall-Peters projection named after the two promoters. The projection (= the way you project a globe on a flat piece of paper) had been known for a long time. Their argument was that each country should be shown in real size relation to each other and that thus each country could take pride in being the size it was. (Gall published about it back in 1855, Peters was the promoter in 1986) Politics always had a place in map making and some might remember the phrase “the all red route” where you could sail all the way around the world and never leave the British Empire. All countries subject to the British Crown were red on the world maps.

The way the world really looks like, if we use that projection that shows the real size of each country.

But for us to understand why it takes as long to sail along the Mexican coast as it does to sail along the American coast the Gall-Peters projection is useful. It also shows that Australia is about the same size as the USA with a bit of Canada thrown in for good measure. My home country, the Netherlands, does not look much different on whatever projection you use. Small is small and remains small. Luckily the Dutch are used to making a lot of noise and as a result most people know who we are and where we are located.

A little piece of Holland is moving at great speed towards Cabo San Lucas. The ms Nieuw Amsterdam is scheduled to arrive at the anchorage tomorrow morning at 07.00 hrs. and to start tender operations around 08.00 hrs. We are the only ship in, and thus we are at anchorage number one, which means only a short ride into town.Weather 82oF / 28oC no wind and no clouds. I hope our guests have invested in Sun block 50 otherwise it might be a painful first encounter with Mexico. Our Indonesian crew is very happy, final weather that makes sense to them and reminds them of normal living conditions.

The smiles are coming out. Looking forward to warmer weather. This was change over day in San Diego with 3 cabin stewards changing the bed in the penthouse.

An un-eventful day today while we sailed down the Californian Coast heading for San Francisco. We had a strong North Westerly wind blowing but as it was a following wind, it was very pleasant on the outside decks and after a gloomy start a lot of guests took the advantage of sitting on the sunny side of the ship on the Promenade deck. I spent a good amount of time trying to convince a guest that we had gale force winds but because the ship was running with the wind at 18 knots, we only had a relative wind force of 2 to 3 on the deck and that made it very pleasant. But he was having none of it, not being able to comprehend the concept of relative wind, regardless of any example that I tried to give. He lived somewhere south in Tornado Alley and it did not matter whether a Tornado approached his house from the west or the east, the wind was the same. So, he had a wind still day as far as he was concerned and the white caps on the waves (denoting 25 knots of wind) were only there for decoration.  Well, there are all sorts out there, you just have to find them…………………

I spend most of my day given refresher training to our Stairway Guides. For those of you who have made cruises you will remember these crew members standing in the staircases and their job is to guide the guests safely and quickly to their lifeboat stations. The Nieuw Amsterdam has about 70 of them and they are in every staircase (also the crew staircases as they are open to the guests during an emergency) and on every landing of each deck. If there would be an emergency, then it is their task to control the human flow of over 2000 guests coming out of the cabins in about 15 minutes time.  Sounds simple but it is not. Therefore this group of crew is the most important group of people in the whole evolution of a successful mustering at the lifeboat stations or in the case of the Koningsdam in the public lounges.

Stairway Guides in action.

Their challenge is that during a normal drill at the start of the cruise, on embarkation day, the guests find their own way quite leisurely. Although we ask the guests to follow protocol and wait in the cabins until the abandon ship alarm sounds, we always have already 30% or so on deck before any alarm is given. That is not good for teaching everybody the proper routines but it makes it a lot less crowded during the final flow with the other 70%.

The challenge starts in a real emergency. Then these 2000+ guests do come out of their cabins at the same time with their life jackets. And now the atmosphere is not convivial anymore. People are anxious, stressed, upset (especially if it happens in the very early morning hours or during dinner time) and sometimes panicky if they do not see family members who might be a bit further down the throng of people flowing up and down the staircases.  According to field studies by psychologists about 30% will listen to orders and follow them; nearly 70% will ignore everything and only tune in after repeated announcements and then there is a small group of 1% or so which might panic. They are dangerous as panic is contagious and if you do not stop it, it can ripple through the whole group.

Keeping Control, one stairway guide and many guests.

All these variations flow past the Stairway Guides and a lot of them want to stop, ask questions, complain or just vent anger and frustration. Our stairway guides are mainly people from the retail groups on board, Shops, Casino, Art, etc. Their background normally has nothing with what could prepare them for this safety function on board. So we train and we train. The company has dedicated power points and training material which the training officer delivers on a regular basis.

Because of the importance of the job, maritime law requires that each position of a Stairway Guide Is marked on the Muster List or Station Bill.  A requirement so the ship can prove that all locations where “flow guidance” is needed are manned.

When I am on a ship, I normally grab the chance to deliver an extra training as I bring a bit more experience and delivery qualifications to the equation. What do we train: tricks of the trade to keep the flow going. How to avoid discussions with the guests, how to quiet them down with short orders and how to select those who are allowed to use the elevators and those who can and should walk the stairs. The main challenge always is to find a common understanding among all the crew as they come from so many ethnic backgrounds and different cultures where the perception of panic and stress can be totally different. One thing they all understand is what a police officer is; so I train them to be the toughest and coolest police officer on the block.

Tomorrow we are in San Francisco. We should be at the pilot station around 05.30 and pass under the Golden Gate Bridge at about 06.15 hrs. depending traffic and then be fully docked before 08.00 hrs. It should be a perfect autumn day here, with temperatures in the low fifties or around 12 oC and sunny with some clouds. A good day to visit one of the most fascinating cities in the USA.

To comply with United States immigration and economic regulations (Passenger Services Act and Jones Act) we have to call at at least at one foreign port during our cruise. For ships that sail from Vancouver this is not an issue at all but for Seattle ships you have to select one. The fact that Victoria is a very nice port, and conveniently located near Seattle, makes it an obvious choice.  Getting there, depends on sailing around Vancouver Island and if the weather is nice, then the ships take the outside (South side) route coming down from Alaska as it guarantees a timely or even early arrival. Going the Inside Passage (North side) way, can cause delays due to traffic and in having to adjust for the slack tide times of the Narrows. Plus, as I explained in an earlier blog most of the scenic transit would be in the dark.

Thus we sailed early this morning into Strait Juan de Fuca although we did not see anything of it. A white cloud had reduced the whole area to very small world and the navigators relied on the Radar and the electronic charts to stay on the straight and narrow. But as the weather forecast had indicated partly sunny weather, it was almost certain that all that whiteness would burn away later in the morning. And indeed by 11 am the curtain was raised and we could see the whole Pudget Sound to starboard and Victoria to port in front of us.

The magenta dotted lines and arrows are there to keep the traffic apart and does not allow you to cut the corner.  Only when the pilot is on board you can leave the regulated track to sail into Victoria. There is traffic control which keeps an eye on all the ships. You have to report and you get told off if you do not follow the rules.

Because traffic for the whole area, Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, Tacoma, etc. comes together over here, either to get in or to get out, this is a very busy place for ships. As a result the shipping community has long ago created traffic lanes to keep everybody apart. There where the ships need to cross each other’s track lines, a sort of roundabout system have been implemented, to make sure that ships do not cross each other’s bow but sail behind each other while crossing the area.

The pilot stepping on board. To ensure safety there is a deck hand on the pilot boat to help him up the pilot ladder and two sailors on our side to help step safely on board. Wearing life jackets is compulsory. Here the pilot has been safely transferred and walking towards the Security Officer to have his I.D checked.

Victoria throws another equation into this busy situation as it also has the pilot exchange point here. Either for boarding pilots who will guide the ships up to Vancouver, or for disembarking the pilots who come down from Vancouver and are destined for open sea. We are then a 3^rd happening, by embarking the pilot for going into Victoria, which from the pilot station is barely three miles. So including docking it never takes much longer than 45 minutes from pilot station to being fully docked with the gangway out.

Victoria has a nice port but it can be very windy here so for captains this is always a mixed blessing. Yes we like to go here as it is a nice port and the guests like it very much but if the wind is under a wrong angle then it can be very complicated to get in and on occasion we have had to cancel a call because there was simply too much wind. That same wind is less of an issue for Seattle as it is further inside and then most of the wind has already lost its “teeth”.

If you push the ship in as far as it can go, then it looks as if you have parked in the local car park.

Today we had just a gentle breeze going, just touching wind force 3, and we sailed into port without any issues. The pilot hopped on board at 11.45 hrs. and 30 minutes later the ship started to ease into the berth. Here in Victoria we prefer to go nose in as it is a more natural maneuver to swing just 90o from an easterly course to a Southerly in the open harbor area, then to go stern way into a narrow space and bring the propellers or Azipods close to the dock wall. The dock is just long enough to accommodate the length of the Amsterdam and thus inching the ship forward as much as possible is also much easier than doing it stern way.

The ship will stay in Victoria until 22.00 hrs. and then will have a 6 hr. crossing to Seattle where it will start docking around 04.30 hrs. It will be a short night for the Captain and the Navigators as it will not be until midnight before the Pudget Sound pilot is on board and then 3.5 hours later the docking approach to Seattle will start already.

Once the guests are off, all mayhem will break lose with the ceilings being opened up for pipe replacement and carpets being torn out for renewal. While this is starting the ms Amsterdam will cross the bay to go to Vigor shipyard near Tacoma where we will stay for two days.

Unusual for Seattle, but good for us, is that we are not expecting any rain, or wind, and have a mild day with temperatures of around 13oC. 56oF. Not a bad way to end a very nice cruise.

This mural is painted on the inner breakwater of the port. Anybody who can decipher the language ??

The port of Homer is a bit of a peculiar thing. It is sitting right on the beach. A beach which is called the Spit and that is one of the reasons we are calling there. The Spit is a long and narrow peninsula sticking out from the main land and there is a sort of settlement located at the end; which is frequented by large numbers of fishermen and a whole tourist industry has sprung up around it. Restaurants, Pubs, Souvenir shops, Fishermen shops and anything else that might attract the tourist and fisherman alike. Because of its remoteness everybody comes by car and the whole approach road all way to the end of the Spit where everything is concentrated is filled with pickup trucks and RV’s. If you are planning to buy one of those and do not know what model to buy, just walk along the street here and you can compare all the brands free of charge and in one location.

The Spit with Homer in the far background. The ship is docked at the finger pier just to the right of the Orange Canopy.  Photo courtesy: unknown source on the internet.

The Spit is also the area for a very large Marina and that is also were we dock, making the Amsterdam the most luxurious yacht in the port. Getting from the ship to the Spit is by means of a complementary shuttle service for which they use school buses. Not a bad idea, as those buses are normally standing idle when they have delivered their early morning load of young America. Homer itself is on the main land, all the way at the end of the Peninsula. To get to Homer there is also a shuttle system available but you have to buy tickets for that trip, or take the shore excursions which mostly include a visit to Homer itself as well.

And this is the “tourist version” from the same Spit. Quite a few things to do while wandering around the place. Thank you to Mr. H.B Hughes who drew this picture.

We were blessed with a sunny day and that was very much needed as it was very chilly. Although the weather forecast had promised a windless day, there was still a gentle breeze blowing but it was a very cold breeze and did not feel very gentle on the skin. I poked my nose outside to touch Homer soil and then hopped straight back inside. I have sunglasses with me but not a fur coat and I needed both today. I wonder what it is like to live here in the winter as the area is not sheltered at all. The Spit is very flat and I would not be amazed if it would partially or completely flood if they get a Storm combined with a Spring Tide. The guests were lucky as it did not rain and the bracing day did not keep them from going ashore.  And they should go ashore as the Spit is quite a nice place to mill around for a few hours. The largest pub has quite a few Craft Beers on draft for those who also wanted to immerse themselves in the local culture by means of a beer glass.

The long road on the Spit. Photo taken during a previous visit.

We arrived here at 10 am. in the morning a bit of an unusual time but that has to do to a large extent with the strong currents in the Captain Cook Inlet. If you set the schedule too tight and you get a strong adverse current, maybe even “enhanced” by an adverse wind you can be an hour late very easily. That has then a knock on effect for shore excursions and everything else, so a 10 am. arrival guarantees that the ship will also be there at that time. By leaving at 18.00 hrs. the guests still get more than enough time to see all the sights.

Tomorrow we are going to do it the other way around. We will be docked before 07.00 hrs. in the morning but leave early in the afternoon at 14.00 hrs. Kodiak is just a short hop south of Homer and thus we can keep that schedule at all times. But after Kodiak we have to cross the Gulf of Alaska again and then we might have adverse weather while doing so. So an early departure from Kodiak will gives us some leeway to ensure that we reach Sitka on time.

The weather forecast does not look too bad at all for the moment but it can change very rapidly here and a forecast six hours later can look quite different from what we looking at now. Below is what we should get tomorrow when we are in the middle of the Gulf, if it does not change. Looking at six foot seas predicted, and then I say “its not bad at all for this time of the year.”

NOAA:

Synopsis: A surface ridge will shift east across the gulf through Thursday and displace a trough of low pressure over the southern panhandle toward the south and east.

Today

W wind 20 kt. Seas 6 ft. W swell early in the morning.

Tonight

W wind 20 kt. Seas 6 ft.

Thu

W wind 15 kt becoming S 25 kt in the afternoon. Seas 6 ft or less. Rain in the afternoon.

Thu Night

SW wind 20 kt. Seas 7 ft. Rain in the evening.

Fri

SW wind 15 kt. Seas 7 ft.

The ship kept behaving quite lively during the night and then during the day. But by mid afternoon the seas settled down somewhat as the winds, which had abated last night, did not provide the energy anymore. We had a nearly windless morning but the still high seas; I saw a few going up 17 feet, and it made it feel like as if we had bad weather.  Most of our guests kept a low profile and that gave rise to my cabin steward complaining that he could not get in any of his cabins.  Still somehow he managed as he reported that by 14.00 hrs. he had serviced them all.  Bad weather makes it hard for the Cabin Stewards as they have to service all their cabins, and work around the different times that the guests are going out. Their break time is at 14.00 hrs. and they start again around 17.30 so if the guests are not leaving, they try to wait past 14.00 hrs. and then it will eat into their break time. Most guests are quite understanding if their – stay in the cabin- results in their cabin not being made up in the morning but not all of them.

This was our route from leaving Icy Strait Point and sailing towards Anchorage. We had most of the high waves and wind in the area where the map reads “of Alaska” Once coming closer to Kodiak things settled down again.  We will visit both Homer and Kodiak on the way down.

We had most of the ships movement while in the curve of the Gulf of Alaska before passing Cape St. Elias. This makes sense as most of the long waves come all the way from Japan and roll in a North Westerly direction towards Alaska. Hitting land in the area of Glacier Bay. If the bad weather has only been near Japan, then the waves are quite sedate by the time they arrive at the Alaskan shores and the ship does not move at all or only has a gentle motion. Very good for taking an afternoon nap. If the wind is also blowing  over the Northern part of the Gulf then that wind keeps energizing the waves, and can build them up even higher, then we get the wobbly weather which we had today.  The more you sail to the west, the more you get out of that North West wave direction and the quieter it gets. The Kodiak Islands offer quite a nice protection as well.

This does not mean that there is no bad weather near the Kenai peninsula, far from that, it is just that often the waves in the area close to the east side of the Kenai peninsula are a little bit less pronounced as there is some shelter from the land. That is with the waves, read swell, coming from lower parts of the North Pacific Ocean. If you have a full westerly storm thundering over then it is mayhem everywhere. But today we were in the position that the swell slowly started to abate once we came closer and closer to the Kenai Peninsula. And once we rounded the southern point of the Peninsula the swell was completely gone. That was good planning as it gave those who had “been under the weather” to come out and have a good dinner. And dress up at the same time as it was formal night.

The amount of wildlife in the area, as far as whales are concerned, has been less than what we normally see. The bridge officers are reporting that the migration of the whales, either to Hawaii or to Cabo had started a few weeks ago and now most of them are gone. Why, I do not know, they do not always leave at the same time; meaning the same week each year.   I have seen large amount of activity until well in October in the past, when my ship was the last one leaving the coast.  But I did not see any whales at all today. First of all, they do not seem to like high waves as I have never seen them swimming on the surface when there is a swell running of 15 or more feet and secondly, by yesterday afternoon we were more or less away from their track down to Hawaii.

Anchorage is located all the way up the Captain Cook Inlet and that means that we will stop off at Homer to collect the South West Alaska Pilot who will guide the ship all the way up the fjord to the dock. Because Cook Inlet is a sort of estuary and gets smaller and smaller when coming closer to Anchorage, the water has to go somewhere when the flood comes in and if it cannot go sideways it has to go up and that results in large currents and high tidal differences. Just after midnight tonight it will be low tide and thus the ship has to go upstream against the outgoing flow during the evening. Luckily then we get the flood in the back and that will help with arriving nicely on time.

Weather for tomorrow: Overcast with rain, 11oC / 51o Fahrenheit.  No a great day but there is no wind forecast so there should be no wind chill factor to make it worse.

The route we take today is exactly the opposite from the day before yesterday as we came from Glacier Bay, now after Seward we are going back to Glacier Bay. We are running at the sedate speed of 12 knots which will brings us to the Ranger Station at Bartlett Cove at the entrance of Glacier Bay at 07.30 hrs. tomorrow morning.

Guests sometimes complain that they do not see anything during this sea day in the Gulf but that is not correct. Yes we do not always see land; you need a very clear day to see the Fairweather Mountain Range which lies along the East Side of the Gulf. And we did indeed not see it, it was too gloomy with showers in the distance and fog patches close to land. But the wildlife can easily make up for that. You just have to be out there, be a little bit patient, and watch the sea and the sky.

And there was a lot to be seen. Apart from the regular whale sightings, we had a low flying Albatross (at least it looked like one), porpoises (maybe small dolphins) and at least 10 different species of birds. We sail no more than 12 miles from the shore line and many birds who are not deep sea birds still venture out that distance. It must be regular practice for them as we seldom have hitch-hikers on board. This is what we call birds that were blown off course or ventured too far out to sea and then land on the deck. They stay for a few hours to rest and then attempt to go back where they came from.

Middleton Island, right on our steamer track. It has a light stand to warn ships it is there and to avoid them running aground during nasty weather. Which did happen in the past.

The route, although close to the coast, is mainly in deep water 5000 to 6000 feet is the norm, except at two locations. When we pass St. Elias on the south point of Kayak Island, then we can catch the underwater out run from that island. And before we approach Resurrection Bay, in the middle of the sea, as a sort of Traffic cone, we have Middleton Island. Why do I call it a traffic one, because ships use it as a natural separation point of the routes. It is sort off the beaten track but there is still a considerable amount of traffic around. Barges to and from Seward, barges and oil tankers to and from Valdez, small boat traffic from Prince William Sound area , fishing boats all over the place and then of course us the cruise ships. For some reason we always seem to get all that traffic when we are near Middleton Island and then “the cone” helps… The Cruise ships normally stay to the south but the Fishing boats normally stay to the North.

In the old days, these landmarks along the route where very important. If there was no land you had to rely on seeing the stars and the sun (a nice challenge in Alaska) and if you saw land you needed something to help you avoid running onto that land (read rocks). So there were and still are lights houses. Nowadays automated but still in use. There is a light on Caines Head, there is a light on Middleton Island, and there is a big light house on Cape. St Elias and there is a big light house at Cape Spencer, there where we re-enter the Inside Passage. Most importantly they are also equipped with a horn or other sound signal so it can be heard when not seen, during the frequent hazy days in this area.

Cape Spencer Lighthouse. Its horn is really famous for the amount of noise it makes. (Photo Courtesy: www.Lighthousefriends.com)

And that sound is considerable. It can be easily heard 4 to 5 miles away and that means that it must make quite a racket when you are close to it. The sound is directional = projected forward into the direction of the ships that need to hear it. In principle if you stand behind the horn, it is not so loud. Good thing as well as it would have been even harder otherwise to keep lighthouse keepers in employment. Those men (and often family’s as well) lived quite a lonely life and there are many stories about suicide or completely disappearing. If they would have had to cope with 24 hrs. of Fog horn, the numbers would have been even greater no doubt.

We will round Cape Spencer in the early morning and then enter Glacier Bay at 08.00 hrs. Weather forecast is very un-settled with many a patch of fog in the lower bay. The upper bay should be nice and clear but there will be no sun, so it is going to be very chilly.

Seward is a sheltered port. Completely sheltered from three sides. So whatever blows out side, will not blow with the same ferocity inside. It has two openings to the south. The one we now use to enter at Caines Head, the South West entrance to Resurrection Bay and Hive Passage which one enters and leaves on an East / West heading. Those passages can let in some unbroken wind and waves but it is not that much and it does not affect the whole bay in such a way that it becomes dangerous to be there. As a result the Alaska Railroad Company from the old days felt very secure in building a terminal here which connected to the ferries, cargo ships and barges coming in from the lower 48.

Noaa Chart 16826. In red the alternative route when sailing to Hubbard glacier and College Fjord.

We now always use the main entrance/exit from Resurrection Bay in the South West corner. Our arrival time is stipulated by the time the shore side starts working and a little time before the Guests are going off. Contrary to disembarkation ports all over the world we are not hampered here by off-loading luggage first as the guests have to collect their luggage in the terminal before seeing immigration. There is no immigration; that is being done in Vancouver, where inside the Canada Place Terminal there is a little piece of the USA hidden behind Canadian Customs.  This routine is possible because for the rest of the time we will only be calling at USA ports.  The CBP protection is also quite happy with the luggage coming on board as it either comes directly from the USA or was cleared by Canadian Customs sometime before.

So we sail completely approved by the American Authorities all the way up to Alaska. Once we get there, there is no CPB to be seen (officially…..) and we can just off load. Because the Guests do not have to go through Customs and because they travel on our trains, voyage with our coaches and stay in our Hotels, we can deliver their luggage to its final destination. Whether that is to the airport or whether that is at their first Hotel stay for the night. And that makes it possible to see the Guest disappearing in the train and the suitcase an hour later into a truck.

For those coming from the Anchorage Airport or from the interior the same thing happens. They arrive by Holland America coaches and their luggage arrives sometime before them and sometimes after them but it ends up in the cabins without the guest having to bother about it. Then after we sail, we do not see any Customs either, as we stay in American Waters until we make it back to Vancouver and Canadian Customs is waiting.

Barwell Island. The soldiers here were mainly busy with information gathering and look-out duties. (Photo Courtesy: unknown source on the internet)

When we sail, we nowadays go out the same way as we come in via the Caines Head entrance. In the good old days of the 1990’s when I was there with the ss Rotterdam V it was more or less standard that we took the Hive passage. Called so because the island marking the entrance resembles a sort of (bee) hive. (Especially after a few beers). It was narrower but straight and it was interesting because the next island, Barwell Island, had gun emplacements on the South side / Ocean side from the 2^nd world war. The USA had a sort of own “Atlantic Wall” erected over here against an invasion from Japan. The Japanese did invade Alaska but not here. But the whole area was strongly fortified as Seward was such a sheltered port of entry. Every time I sailed by it, I had to think about the poor soldiers sitting there in the Alaskan winter with the howling storms of the Gulf of Alaska around them and just waiting and waiting and waiting.  In the summer time the whales must have created some distraction but in the winter it must have been quite horrible. From the outside it did not look as if Uncle Sam had spent a lot of money on making the setup really comfortable.

We could go through here as our next stop was College Fjord and we had our South West Pilots on board. Now we do not do that anymore, see blog from yesterday, and thus the pilot gets off well inside, also because we do not have a real pilot boat in Seward. We use the local tugboat, which also acts as a lines boat, for the cruise ships coming in.

Tomorrow we are retracing our route back on the same course track through the Gulf of Alaska. There should be a little bit more swell than yesterday as we had a good 15 knots of southerly winds blowing all afternoon. Still is should be a comfortable ride.