02 October 2007, Bar Harbor.

Another beautiful day to enjoy. Fresh crisp air, the leaves on the trees turning and the sun warming the air up just enough to make it pleasant. We were in port with the QE2 but as they came in later and had wait for full CBP clearance we had our guests ashore before it really got busy. Although in the afternoon with over 3000 people making their way back to the ships and all the tours coming back it did get busy. In the end we sailed 45 minutes late as it took awhile to get everybody from the tour bus back on board.

The ship is gearing up for our next cruise which is a 12 day from Montreal to Tampa. The navigator is busy with setting the courses for next cruise and does that nowadays on an electronic chart. Basically a computer screen. This electronic chart is also producing a display on the radar screen and that makes navigating a lot easier. The radar displays, apart from the ships echoes, also the land as laid-out on the chart and the depths of the water. If the red dotted line is lay out correctly then the only thing you have to do is stay on it. When the courses all have been laid out and approved by the captain, then they are transferred to a paper chart. Paper sea-charts are still compulsory, although change is coming. This year the US navy is going paperless and when that has happened; the North American regulatory bodies will approve electronic charts for the merchant marine as well. Under the Dutch (flag state) rules electronic charts have been accepted already for some years.

Setting courses from one port to the other has thus become much easier. Just a click from a mouse and there is the next way point. What had become much more difficult in the last few years is the preparation. In the old days, if your course did not go over a shallow spot, then you were in business and eventually made it to port. Now each port and each part of the coast has restrictions and exemptions and you have to read all the books you can lay your hands on to find out with what you have to comply with this time. Long questionnaires are sent to the local agent to find out if something has changed in the last few months and then the puzzle starts. What was a straight course line between two points suddenly becomes multi angled. Marine sanctuaries have to be avoided, no go zones, no discharge zones, economic exclusion zones; there is a whole list of things that makes the life of a navigator difficult nowadays. And the schedules get tighter and tighter as well, and so does the fuel budget.

I have in my collection world cruise brochures from the 1930’s that mention arrival in ports with just AM. in the morning for arrival and with just PM. for departure, the rest left to the vagaries of the weather and the decision of the captain. Later the brochures said 0800 arrival and 1800 departure and the captain would have enough leeway in the schedule to come in early and leave a bit later if necessary. Now the schedules are tight, if arrival says 08.00, I am most of the time docked no more then 20 minutes before. If a country throws in another no go zone, then it quickly eats up those 20 minutes. Prime example was yesterday in Boston. Due to the Right Whale area’s, we have to sail further out and thus we had to amend our arrival schedule as there was no leeway anymore.

Thus the navigator puzzles and puzzles. For the coming cruise, we also have many of those puzzles. One of those is going around the Florida Keys. In the past we were able to cut inside the Dry Tortugas, West of Key West. That is now a Marine sanctuary, so we have to go around it. That adds 10 miles or 30 minutes steaming at full speed. On a two day schedule that is a significant amount of time. I can absorb those 10 miles but it means switching on an extra engine at $350 an hour for fuel. So I hope to avoid that by pin- pointing the direction of the Gulf Stream correctly and using the counter current that runs under the Keys. However as the axis of the Gulf Stream varies in location, doing that properly is going to be an interesting exercise.