25 March 2018; Port Everglades / Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

I do not know what the apartments that are standing on the edge of the Fairway into Port Everglades look like on the inside but in principle it must be wonderful to live there. At least if you are into ship watching and especially if you are into cruise ship watching.

A ships spotters dream ? To live in an apartment situated like this?

The whole world is moving right past your balcony and even on non-cruise ship days there is a lot of tanker and container ship traffic, not forgetting the barges and all the pleasure yachts. So this morning must have been nice as well, as it was even nice to see it from the Eurodam herself who followed the big boys in at the scheduled time. Yes today we are again the smallest cruise ship in the port although we will carry over 2000 guests during the coming cruise. I do not know if the schools are out but we have a lot of children and young adults on board who normally should be somewhere else.

A tanker entering Port Everglades and sailing in on the leading lights. which are standing right between the two piers somewhat inland. So if a tanker docks there, the lights are sometimes obscured.

Sailing into Port Everglades is in principle very simple but can be made complicated by outside influences. On a nice and quiet day like today, it does not take much more than to stay clear of the sea buoy and sail in on the leading lights at a course of 267o.  The leading lights, two vertical lights in line will tell you if you are in the middle of the channel or drifting to one side or the other.  The simplest complication that we have here is that a tanker at its berth can be blocking the leading light. That has happened a few times but until now the leading lights were never heightened. Maybe because it does not happen often enough for the authorities to take action.

The old pilot boat, the USCG boat and the new pilot boat all waiting to stop yachts that do not follow the rules. In the back is just the stern of the Carnival Conquest that can be seen, when she was just coming off the dock.

2nd complication on a nice summers day, are the yachtsmen, skilled and unskilled; the Sunday sailors and the six pack navigators who go in and out of the port with not much knowledge, never realizing that they might be in the way, or not realizing that we cannot always see what is going on. Nor that we can guess what the plans are of each yacht in the vicinity. As the yachtie’s sometimes do not even know themselves what they are doing, how can we know? Also 10 feet clearance in passage is a lot for yacht or motorboat but not much for a large ship and the other side does not often realize that. Luckily we have the pilot boat, the boat of the sheriff’s office, the USCG and the Waterway Police, who try their best to keep the route clear when the cruise ships are sailing in or out. Biggest problem is if we have a small yacht who insists on sailing in in the middle of the channel in the leading light instead of hugging the buoys. We can have deep draft sail boats (drawing at least 40 feet………..) who think they have to be in the middle or otherwise they run aground.

The next complication can be wind and current. Port Everglades harbor only closes during Hurricanes but going in with wind on the side means you have to keep up the speed a bit more otherwise you drift too much. Sometimes we need more speed than we can handle with slowing down in a normal way in the turning basin. Then we put a tugboat (Docking modules they call them here) at the stern to help with putting the brakes on.  Especially the Apartments of the Seas can have problems here, with the number of balconies (wind catchers) and their length, as they do not have very much room to drift.

The Current, apart from the regular ebb or Flood, normally falls away as soon as we are between the breakwaters. The problem is that the location of the Gulf Stream varies from being all the way on the Bahamas side of the Florida Straits, to sitting on top of the Port everglades sea buoy. The latter does not happen very much but it does so once in the 5 or 6 years. It can even surprise the pilots and they zip in and out of the port all day long. Then the ship has to steer a considerable drift angle and once the bow comes between the breakwaters, correct the course very quickly when the influence of the current falls away. Not a pleasant thing to do.

Today we had none of those issues. The Cruise Ship parade sailed in and sailed out on schedule and the authorities in their boats raced around to make it easy for us. Happy Captains.

Tonight we will sail through New Providence Channel, staying south of Freeport in the Bahamas and then in the early morning make a turn to the south and follow the coastline of Eleuthera Island to Half Moon Cay where we should be parked by 08.00 hrs. Weather: the same as the yesterday very nice. That one cold front that was left in the area is rapidly moving away.