Captain Albert Schoonderbeek

During the night the wind got less and less and by the time we approached the pilot station it was calm. The swells were still running but as the port is inside a shallow bay, the swell is stopped by a long breakwater and inside it was as flat as a mirror. The weather forecast for the day was uncertain but in the end it was bright with sunshine all day. The approach to the harbour is very peculiar as the green buoys on the right hand side are located well inside the reefs and the reef buoys on the port side when going in, are over in the fairway. So if you would hug the green buoys when going in, what you normally do, then you would be aground almost at once. So when going in and when going out you have to favor the red side of the channel. That means that Port Control keeps an eagle eye on all the ships going through the channel as you do not want to create collisions with this peculiar setup.

Staying on the red side makes sense as the turn into the harbour basin is almost 90 degrees, so the wider the turn you can make, the easier it is. The piers are named after Spanish Royalty and so we had the Princessa Sophia pier and the Alfonso XIII to name but two. We were docking at the latter one and it is almost the closest berth to the town. Almost; as we had to leave some dock space for a local ferry that was arriving later in the day. The beginning of the pier is a container terminal but when there are more cruise ships scheduled for the day, they delay the cargo traffic to accommodate the cruise ships. We were however the only one and thus there was not much of an issue about where were going to dock and about taking a berth away from a cargo ship.

Apart from being a cruise and container port, Cadiz is also very important as a ferry port with daily departures to the Canary Islands. During the winter time it is mainly cargo traffic that is being ferried over but during the summer time the ferries are full every day with tourists. Especially Tenerife gets a lot of car traffic in the form of SUV’s and Campers from the Northern parts of Europe. At the moment the season has not started yet and so we only saw lorries with containers driving on (Roll-on) and driving off (Roll –off)

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Captain Albert Schoonderbeek

Well the wind did not die off and the frontal system did not diffuse or move away. Instead the flow around Cabot San Vincent only got stronger and whipped up a nice South Westerly swell. What made things worse was that the wind shifted about 2 points more to the South and was thus running in line with the approach course to Portimao. Approaching with the swell in the stern is never pleasant because when you start slowing down the swells tend to overtake the ship and then it feels as if you get a kick in the……. every few minutes when a wave hits the underside of the stern. However it turned out that that was the least of my troubles.

With a wind force 6 blowing we approached the pilot station with an excited pilot on the VHF telling us not to come closer than 2 miles. He was coming out with the pilot boat and he did not have a very comfortable ride as the pilot boat was small and the waves, still building up, were large. I had to put the Prinsendam almost perpendicular on the wind and waves to make a good lee for his boat to come alongside and for him to step on board. By looking at the waves crashing into the breakwater I was already becoming convinced that sailing into port was not going to be a wise thing to do and the pilot quickly confirmed that. The strong wind was blowing straight into the port making it nearly impossible with a high ship as the Prinsendam to stay in the narrow channel. To make matters worse, the swell running into the harbour entrance reduced the depth at entrance by two meters every time a trough was coming through. The minimum depth there was 8 meters, minus 2 meters swell is six and our draft is 7, so we were at least a meter short with every wave trough rolling in. To top things off, there is a river flowing through the port and due to the hard rains yesterday this produced a strong flow through the entrance channel. Our pilot was not a happy chappy when he had to announce that according to him it was not a good idea to go in. (Also the shop keepers normally do not like it when pilots advise cancellations.)

I did not think it was a good idea either and thus we aborted the approach. As the weather was not going to improve until well into the afternoon, it did not have any use to hang around with the ship, so I disembarked the pilot and turned away from the port. After a port cancellation my first thoughts always are; is there something else I can offer the guests. Sometimes there is another port nearby, or you can arrive earlier in the next port if the schedule allows it but in this case it was not easy. Cadiz berth had been booked for tomorrow and a container ship was currently docked there. There is no other port near Portimao that could have taken the Prinsendam. Portimao is the biggest port in the area and even that is a tight squeeze for the Prinsendam.

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Captain Albert Schoonderbeek

As mentioned yesterday we arrived with glorious sunshine but an hour later dark clouds started to gather on the horizon. That had not been planned at all in the forecast. However the weather does not always follow the predictions. The weather front that created the overcast weather before we arrived in Lisbon, stalled and tilted a little bit instead of moving north and deposited a rather large amount of rain over Lisbon in the course of the afternoon of the first day. Then it remained drizzly during our over overnight stay. Only today the weather started to improve with sunny periods.

Apart from the pilots being involved in getting the ship into port there is also the VTS or the vessel traffic systems. These are watched over by traffic control centres in the Lisbon area. This starts already quite far out in the open sea. Near Cabo San Vicente (South West point of Portugal and Europe) and in front of the Lisbon coast VTS systems have been put in place to regulate the traffic. When you look in the chart you see imaginary highways keeping Northbound and Southbound traffic apart. It reduces the chance of collisions between ships and it also reduces the change of environmental disasters as it keeps the tankers away from the coast.

When approaching Lisbon with its estuary of the Rio Tejo; we have to call in at certain points to let the control station (called ROC control here) know, who we are, what we are doing and where we are going. When we sail up the river we switch over the VHF to Lisbon Port Control which controls the whole river area and the port itself. The idea is that port control comes back with information that will help plan a safer passage up and down the river. In the weekend the port is not so busy and so it is relatively quiet with the information offered. During the week days port control normally has a lot to advise and also helps with calling other ships if there is an issue arising. Also they are normally aware when something is going to happen in the port, especially with navy exercises.

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Captain Albert Schoonderbeek

During the night the swells from this weather front high up the North Atlantic reached us. A very long swell with a clocked time, from crest to crest, of about 12 seconds. The ships stabilizers could easily cope with this and thus the movement of the Prinsendam was minimal. The weather forecast for today was very good, with sunny skies and temperatures in the mid to high sixties although it turned out that that forecast had to be corrected later in the day.

I was aiming for a noon time pilot station time, which was on the early side but most of the time the river Tejo is full of sailing boats during the weekend, plus numerous fishing boats and then it is slow going. They always tend to be just where we want to be as well, and not all Sunday Sailors have any gumption of where they should be. That is out of the way of commercial traffic. I had also planned to swing on arrival, so we would be able to shoot straight out after departure tomorrow. A starboard side docking was making sense anyway as the tide was flooding and it is preferred to dock with the bow into the tide as it is easier to control the ship that way. As the Rio Tejo has a large estuary entrance which gets narrower and narrower ,like a funnel, when coming closer to the bridge, there is a considerable current on the river and along the docks. So with the pilots blessing, we were going to dock sb side alongside.

The pilot station of Lisbon is not at the entrance of the river, but about 10 miles upstream near Belem tower. That means that we sail ourselves those ten miles up and down the river until we get to the pilot station. There is the option to pick up the pilot before you enter the river but then you have to go to Cascais first, just to the North of the river mouth, that costs at least an extra hour and I have never seen the necessity of it.

The new “Belem Tower” of the pilots.

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