Captain Albert Schoonderbeek
I had really hoped that for this port it would be a wind still day as anchoring in La Spezia with wind would have been an unpleasant challenge. Well it was. La Spezia is a big cargo and navy port. There is no real cruise terminal or a half decent cargo dock available that could be used to dock a cruise ship. Thus the authorities have decided that cruise ships should anchor and tender directly to the boulevard of La Spezia. Not a bad idea in principle. Instead of needing a shuttle or paying for a taxi, the ships tender deposits all the sightseers directly in the nicest location. For that reason an anchorage is allocated that is nearest to the tender float and out of the way of other traffic. That works fine as long as there is no wind in the port.
Well today we had wind and lots of it, a strong South Easterly was blowing, having come with us all the way from Civitavecchia. Apart from the fact that it gave us a bumpy ride to La Spezia it was now going to make my day very difficult while in port. La Spezia has a large breakwater that protects the port from the incoming swell. If that breakwater had not been there, there would have been no way that I could have made the port call. Six feet waves rolling into the anchorage area do not create a safe environment for a tender operation. However this breakwater stopped the long rolling waves and thus reduced the wind driven waves in the harbour to a workable size. With keeping the tender door out of the wind it would make a safe tender operation possible.
However there was a next challenge. Straight trough the port runs a deep water channel of a depth of 14 meters for the large container ships to get to the docks. Thus the anchorages inside the harbour area are divided, split, by this channel. The channel is marked by poles not with buoys as is normally the case. We were assigned an anchorage to the west of the channel, opposite the tender landing platform. That is a smaller anchorage and surrounded by these deep channel poles. The opposite side of the channel has much more room, but anchoring there would result in a longer tender distance and with the tenders having to cross the deep water channel. The later is something that no port authority likes to have happening.
Thus we proceeded to the assigned anchorage. A large enough anchorage for the ship to swing around in when being pushed by the tide. However the anchorage was not wide enough for the Prinsendam to lay behind a stretched anchor chain. That was going to happen as the strong wind would push the ship all the way into the port until the anchor chain would come taut and then would keep the ship in place. So while I could anchor, I could not pay out as much chain as I wanted to create sufficient holding power to avoid the ship from dragging its anchor. Thus the only option was to have the anchor help with holding the ship, using the main engines to reduce the strain on the chain so we would not drag and to use the bow thrusters all day long to create a lee for the tender boats.
In the morning that was not an easy feat, as the wind remained blustery, very strong and with the wind direction shifting all the time. The last item made it difficult to keep the wind on the port bow and running a sheltered tender service from the starboard bow or vice versa. In the afternoon the wind abated slowly but steadily and things improved considerably for running the tender service. In the port it was quite pleasant by the time we left. Although it remained overcast during the whole day, the torrential rains that had been predicted by some weather forecasts never materialized. However it meant for me a full day maneuvering on the bridge, trying to juggle, wind, anchor strain, and lee side at the same time. I was quite happy when we had picked up our last tender and were sailing out of the harbour.
When we came outside again there was still quite a swell running and the Prinsendam moved around a bit. The weather forecast for Marseilles is very good. No wind on arrival and sun shine all day. Thus the seas will have to ease off during the night giving the guests a good night rest.
To access Captain Albert’s historical writings on Holland America Line as well as photos and additional information about Prinsendam and his sailing schedule, click here.
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