Today we spent the first of two days at sea, sailing down the Mexican coast, heading for Puerto Vallarta. Hurricane Miriam has been downgraded to a tropical storm and is expected to completely collapse today. We only noticed a long swell coming for that direction with a height of about 10 feet. Nothing to worry about. The 2nd Tropical Storm, Norman, is moving nicely inland and should provide some rain on the Mexican Mainland by the time we pass Cabo San Lucas, so also nothing to worry about. The only negative thing about Miriam is that she really upset the surface current and pushed the California current away from the area. Normally we get about 0.5 knots of free speed out of it, but by 10 am it had all disappeared; making my Chief Engineer a very unhappy man, as it raises the fuel consumption. Continue reading

Indeed nobody was shooting at us while we sailed under the Catalina islands, through the navy exercise area, towards the pilot station of San Diego. We saw some navy activity but they were all sailing around in circles. The navy calls that exercises, we of the merchant navy always think something else………But they stayed out of our way and by 05.00 we happily approached the pilot station. Normally it is very quiet there but today it was pure mayhem. I counted at least 8 sailing boats, a deep drafted fisherman (that means he kept sailing in the mid channel steamer track, probably afraid of running aground) a survey vessel floating around south of the pilot station and also in the way) and then there was a tug and tow shortening its tow line. This tug and tow was going to follow us in so at least we knew what he was doing. On the way out was a car carrier destined for Hawaii, but with that ship we could communicate and thus knew that he was going to stay out of our way. Enough to keep us happy and occupied in the early morning. Continue reading

Today we were sailing off the Californian coast passing the San Francisco area in the early morning. We stayed far far away from the entrance area to the Golden Gate, first because our straight course line did not take us there but also as there are rules that stipulate, that if you do not need to be there, then you should stay away. The days of casual sightseeing are over and only the ships calling at a port or area should be in the designated shipping lanes. The only sight we had was a thick cloud cover lying over the ship. That was not in the predictions but in the battle between the Northerly –dry- wind -promising clear skies and the Southerly -wet- flow caused by hurricane Miriam; the south won this time and that resulted in overcast skies. Going forth on that way of thinking, this flow must have tired Miriam out so much that she was degraded to a tropical storm with the prediction of falling apart within the next 36 hours. Continue reading

As expected the ship was a bit lively, courtesy of wind and waves hitting the ship on the starboard quarter. That produces a sort of corkscrew motion; a combination of a bit of rolling and a bit of pitching but in an irregular way. Still I was quite happy with the state of affairs as I have seen it much worse during this time of the year here. I was just very glad that we did not have to go the other way. So we surfed away with the weather, had the ship being going the other way, we would have been pushing against it. I do not think that I would have been able to go much faster than 15 knots then and still would have had to deal with severe pitching against the long running swell. We passed a tug and tow this morning, battling its way northbound and I do not think that the skipper was a very happy camper; sliding & gliding up and down the waves with a yawning barge behind him. But we are running away from it all, and the weather will only get better the closer we get to San Diego. Continue reading

By 04.30 we picked up the anchor and sailed towards the pilot station just outside Victoria Harbor, from there it is about 3 miles towards the dock. As it is a slow approach and a 90 degree turn to line up for docking, it took just over an hour to get the Statendam parked. By 7 am the gangway was set in on the shore side and everybody could stream ashore. The weather was beautiful with no wind and a lot of sunshine so Victoria could enjoy the focus of 1200 eager shoppers and sightseers. We have now basically started our Trans Canal cruise, but with a 3 day coastal attached to it. Half the ship stays on and half the ship will leave in San Diego. Because of this longer cruise we will do some other ports than on our normal Trans Canal, where we do not call at Corinto in Nicaragua and Oranjestad Aruba. Continue reading

It is not exactly company policy to make a scenic cruise announcement at 06.00 in the morning but I was very tempted to do so. What we had this morning was a picture postcard arrival. It was still dark (with Sun rise being at 7 am) when we started the approach around 05.30 towards the Lions Gate Bridge and the Vancouver sky line was lit up like a Fancy Fair. We had crystal clear skies, wind still weather and it all just looked as if on a postcard. It was in one word beautiful. This was my 235th cruise to Alaska and I think this Vancouver arrival was one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. I was glad to see that at least about a 100 guests were out on deck, alerted by me the day before that we would have nice weather in Vancouver. But I could not have predicted this in my wildest dreams. Continue reading

Today was the last day of our final Alaska cruise, sailing down to Vancouver. Another great and sunny day to enjoy and the Inside Passage part in the afternoon was just beautiful. We had crossed the Canadian Border at 11 pm. last night and sailed during the night and morning through Queen Charlotte Sound before we re-entered the Inside Passage at 3 pm. at Pine Island. Our whole schedule is linked to passing Seymour Narrows at slack tide and tonight this was at 22.15 hrs. During the evening you can see a sort of parade of ships forming all heading towards the Narrows for the same time. Southbound the Statendam and the Zaandam and Northbound the Diamond Princess and the Zuiderdam. In between a whole gaggle of small craft. Pleasure boats, tug and tows, log tows; all together a heady mix of traffic that all wants to get through the Narrows at or near slack tide.

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The stretch from Juneau to Ketchikan is a high speed run and as soon as we were past the city limits of Juneau, we put the pedal to the metal and raced down Stephens Passage. During this overnight voyage there are two points of (nautical) interest. Rounding Cape Decision and sailing through Snow Passage. Cape Decision has two challenges, first we have to go around the Cape through a fairly narrow passage where we cannot always see the traffic and secondly in this area we are exposed to the ocean swell and that can on occasion create a very lively ship. In Snow Passage we have two issues; currents can be very strong there as all the water is being pushed through a narrow gap between the land and it can be full of whales, which in general do not follow the Rules of the Road. Putting the onus on us not to bump into them. Continue reading

Feeling as if we were all by ourselves in the world the Statendam approached Juneau. As we were alone we could set our arrival time without having to fit in with the normal convoy and that gave me half hour extra in bed. If there are more ships calling then the agent sets the pecking order so each ship can arrive without being hindered by another ship. For us that meant all summer a very early arrival as we were always tucked away in the corner of the Alaska Steamship dock. A very good place to be but it meant that everybody involved in arrival had to get going very early. Now we just had to make sure that we arrived 30 minutes before the first tour started. Much more civil and pleasant. By 07.00 hrs. we were happily parked at the Cruise Terminal and the first people streamed ashore to enjoy what was going to be a glorious day. Continue reading

To our utter amazement and enjoyment the good weather seems to be holding. Not just for today, but for the coming week as well. We might even get a dry day in Ketchikan if things continue to go as they are now developing. The only thing that is indicating that the season is over is that we do not arrive and depart in daylight anymore. The sun rises around 06.45 if visible and sets around 19.00 hrs. so we arrive and depart in “the dark days before Christmas” as we call it. Christmas might still be far away, although in England the first large supermarket chain has already opened their Christmas grotto on September 1st. so Christmas cannot be that far away, at least according to them. It must look very quaint though to see Father Christmas selling pumpkins for Halloween. I am glad I do not understand this sort of deeper thinking and I try to keep myself to the simpler things in life such as parking the ship in Haines. Continue reading