Today we had weather that pleased everybody. It was dry and mainly overcast, hardly any wind and not too warm. A perfect day for sightseeing and shopping; and for the professionals not to be worried about getting low hanging clouds during the night. The Amsterdam was the first of a whole parade of ships coming in. During the day the Statendam arrived, followed by the Crown Princess and the Golden Princess. Together good enough for bringing over 7000 guests ashore. Life as a shopkeeper cannot be too bad in Juneau. Most of the shops in the downtown area, large and small, have been there as long as I remember. Some have grown in size but none have closed their doors. Except the Harley Davidson store near the Alaska Steamship Berth. That was something that did not amaze me at all. The road in Juneau only runs from the airport to just past the cruise terminals. I think the maximum length is 32 miles or so and that must lower the demand for a – King of the Road – touring motorcycle dramatically. Guests cannot take one on board and means that the only business would be merchandise. And how many motor HD enthusiasts would there be among 6000 guests coming ashore? In Ketchikan the HD sign is still on the front of one of the shop buildings but I do not know if they are still inside. Something to look at next time.

Today was lifeboat exercise day for the crew that needs to get the Lifeboat Assistant certificate for the new 3 alarm system. Juneau harbor is a perfect place for that, as most of the time Mount Roberts shelters the port from the wind and even if there is wind, then the free water surface area available is not enough to whip up waves. When lowering lifeboats with trainee’s inside you do not want waves as it makes the un-hooking of the boat more complicated and dangerous. Today all was quiet and team after team went down into the water, maneuvered and played with the boat and was then also instructed in the art of – safely coming back – to the ship.

All the crew are from the hotel department and vary from Entertainers (cast) to TV technicians, dining room stewards and even people from the Laundry.  Although this is pure routine for me to help out with something like this, it is still always interesting to see how amateurs from a totally different background take to the whole proceeding.

The topic that suddenly surfaced today was the lack of a toilet in a lifeboat. So how do you go, when you have to go…….?  Answer: bucket behind a curtain. Suddenly all interest was focused on where to get a curtain, what could you use as a curtain and how would you rig such a thing in a lifeboat. It is amazing what people can come up with – thinking outside the box – when necessity and urge grips them.  So from 2 oars and a sea anchor it was deemed possible to screen off an area for privacy. The fact that this contraption took over half the lifeboat and thus most likely would not work with 150 people in the boat was not considered relevant. And I did not feel to be the right person to shatter their dreams.

So I am happy to say, that after 33 years with the company, I still come across new things that I have not experienced before. A sort of wigwam/tepee inside a lifeboat. Original it was, but practical??

Tomorrow we are in Sitka and then the trainee’s will get lifeboat inventory lessons and the chance to taste some of the emergency rations. That is also always a source of good fun.

Part of an Alaska cruise is looking at Glaciers, and there are several options. In the Gulf of Alaska it is popular to go to Hubbard Glacier, in the Inside Passage it is of course Glacier Bay, which is the most popular, but then there is the 3^rd option and that is Tracy Arm. This is an inlet, a fjord located south of Juneau.  It is not so wide and deep as Glacier Bay but the mountains are very steep, raise very sharply out of the water and come very close to the where the ships sails.  It resembles the Norwegian Fjords very closely.

Where a ship goes to see ice depends on several factors. First for Glacier Bay you need to have a permit; a permit which is issued by the National Park of Glacier Bay. They only issue so many permits a year and also not more than 2 a day for the larger ships. If a cruise company does not get a permit, then the ships are not allowed in. Holland America is the most senior company visiting Glacier Bay and that gives a sort of preference. But also the ships & company are rated every year in how they work with Glacier Bay to offer the best Nature Experience. Running bingo while the ship is in front of the Glacier is not considered to be part of a good Nature experience. Holland America does it’s utmost to give the guests the best experience possible and works closely with the Park Rangers to make it better and better every year. As a result the company always gets sufficient permits.

Then there is the schedule to think of. Sailing from Seattle takes at least 6 hours longer, which is nearly a full port day, going up and going down. Glacier Bay is the most northerly point on an average Alaska cruise and from there the ship has to get back to Seattle on time. If you go to Glacier Bay, while on the Seattle run, it means one port less in a cruise compared with a Vancouver 7-day cruise.  Going down to a two port cruise is not much fun and thus for the schedule of the Amsterdam, calling at Tracy Arm works very well. It is on the way to Juneau, which means you do not have to go out of the way to get there, and a apart from calling at Juneau, you can still call at Sitka and Ketchikan. Do 3 ports and still make it on time to Seattle, with an evening call at Victoria thrown in, to comply with the Jones Act.

Other Companies who do not have Glacier Bay permits only have the Hubbard Glacier and the Tracy Arm option. Holland America can offer all three in its brochures. Lately we have not been offering Hubbard Glacier very much, as it is rather un-predictable. The Glaciers there are so wide and they calve off so much ice, that often the ships cannot get close enough to the Glacier wall as the fallen ice is completely packing up the bay. If you can get close, then the spectacle is much more impressive than Glacier Bay………. but you never know. Glacier Bay is a steady performer and we know that the guests will get what they pay for.  With Hubbard you might hit the jackpot but not if cannot get in, and you do not want to disappoint guests who have saved all year long for that one cruise to see a glacier.

Tracy Arm, a long bending fjord south of Juneau. At the end is south Sawyer Glacier where the ship stops.

So the Amsterdam calls at Tracy Arm and can still offer 3 Alaska ports during its cruise. The glaciers are normally quite active, so there is calving and you can get close enough to that glacier to be impressed by all its majesty. It does offer one thing which Glacier Bay does not have, very steep mountains on either side and a ship that sails by very close, while still in very deep water. This is an afternoon call, from 1400 hrs. to 20.00 hrs.  and while sailing out you get the additional bonus of a setting sun which colors the steep cliffs in a sort of golden hue.

Today was a very good day and the ship could sit near the glacier and see it all happening. By 5 pm we turned around and while it was leaving the basin in front of the glacier the Norwegian Jewel came around the corner. Everything perfectly organized. The sun sets at 21.53 hrs. and even then it stays light, so also for that ship plenty of time for sightseeing with plenty of time left to get outside again. The whole inlet or Arm is full of scattered ice cubes, large and small and thus you need daylight navigation in this area.

We were back in fully open waters by 9 pm.  and then aimed for a 0700 arrival tomorrow morning in Juneau.

I had some connectivity problems, so three posts in a row. This is number 3

When we pulled out of Seattle, the Puget Sound looked very nice with the sun shining and not much wind. A great view on departure. So I was getting worried, how long would it last. The ship was going the same way up North as it has come down, sailing around Vancouver Island. I was not disappointed or better said I was, as I had hoped to be wrong. The ship had barely entered the Strait of Juan de Fuca when the whistle started to blow again. As I had expected it, I had gone to bed early to catch at least a few hours of sleep.  I did not envy the captain and staff captain at all, as the very low hanging clouds persisted for almost 24 hours. From Yesterday, Seattle day 1900 hrs. until today, nearly at the same time.

Luckily as the ship has to take this route, there is not that much to see when the clouds are high in the sky and the guests did not miss that much. The whales that can be seen here in abundance in spring and autumn are now in Alaskan waters eating their belly’s full and we will see them later. As it is the first day of the cruise, the guests are milling around in full force trying to figure out of how the ships lay out works and where everything is. As it is high summer we have a large amount of children on board (at least “large” for HAL standards) but the 4 Club Hal Team members keep them safely “locked up” inside Club HAL. Most parents are quite happy to drop the kids off in the morning and collect them again in the evening again. Sometimes they are being picked up for lunch, but normally after the first day little Johnny prefers to stay at Club HAL and far away from his parents.

As with every HAL ship, the Amsterdam is full of antiques and memorabilia from the Dutch Empire days and some recent items as well. We have on display a woven tapestry made by one of the members of the Cobra group, Karel Appel, which was very famous in the 1960’s. I still have not figured out what the tapestry is supposed to symbolize, but maybe that is the purpose of it.

ms Amsterdam forward staircase deck 9

What I have figured out is a display of gold colored fairy’s hanging in the staircase on deck 9 just outside my cabin. I knew I had seen that before, on another ship, somewhere in the past. Yesterday I read the name plate that goes with it and then it clicked into place. Nieuw Amsterdam 1938, far before my time, but I had seen it on photos in my collection. So time to check the files and yes there is was.

ss Nieuw Amsterdam II First Class Lobby

The Four Seasons by the Dutch artist Leo Brom had originally hung in the First Class Lobby of the Nieuw Amsterdam II and now re-surfaced here on the Amsterdam III. As I have never seen the Nieuw Amsterdam II in real life, I was 15 when she went for scrap; it was a nice moment to recognize a real life piece of this ship. There is still quite a bit of items from the ship around. A lot was taken off before she went to Taiwan. Some is located in the Maritime Museum, some in an art museum and some is in the hands of collectors.  I have been told that some items are still for sale in Kaohsiung, near 40 years after the scrapping.  I will have to do some digging to find out how this piece survived all those years and how it ended up on board this ship. Holland America does not maintain a depot for its ship art so it must have come from somewhere else.

The ms Amsterdam will continue to run up the West coast of Vancouver Island, then pass the Queen Charlotte Islands and then early tomorrow morning, enter Chatham Strait to pick up the pilot at Kake, where the Alaska Inside Passage starts. Tomorrow afternoon the ship will be in Tracy Arm, looking at Glaciers as the Amsterdam is not visiting Glacier Bay. I mentioned in a previous blog that in the old days Holland America was always in port alone. That is no longer the case, 3 to 4 ships is the norm but even in Tracy Arm, off the beaten path, we will not be by ourselves as somewhere inside we will meet the Norwegian Jewel.

The weather forecast calls for overcast skies and chilly northerly winds and that will mean that the chance for very low hanging clouds it not that great. So maybe we can put the ships whistle to bed for a few days.

I had some connectivity issues, so there are three posts in a row.

Since a number of years Holland America has used Seattle as a home port. This was not always the case. When the company came to Alaska back in the 1970’s it sailed from Vancouver. Partly because of the Jones Act and partly because the ships could not make the speed needed  to do a real 7 day Alaska adventure from Seattle. Plus there were not that many cruise ships going to Alaska anyway. Apart from Holland America there was the occasional Princess or Cunard and a few one off calls from other companies but that was it. When I came to Alaska for the first time in 1982, we were always the only ship in port, so sparse were the number of ships out there. Holland America dominated the market because it had the infrastructure of Westours with its hotels, coaches and hinterland experience.

Alaska grew quickly in popularity, HAL and Princess expanded and we saw more ships of Sitmar appearing. Then Crystal Cruises came, Cunard showed up and even a student ship called the Universe Explorer sailed for years and years in Alaska.   It was real boom town in its expansion, a sort of gold rush but with the gold in the bank to pay for the cruises. Vancouver benefitted greatly from all of this, and when Expo 86 came, they grabbed the chance to build a new cruise terminal at the same time as the Hotel(s) that were needed to cater for all the Expo Visitors.

Holland America offered in those days Gateway fares with the cruise. It meant that you could fly free as long it was inside the lower 48 States. Guests flew to Seattle and were then bussed to Vancouver. It was normally a smooth operation but on high days and holidays there could be long delays at the border. I once experienced such a delay and the ship missed the favorable Seymour Narrows tide and as a result arrived late in Ketchikan.

Seattle had a port, quite a big one, although they were not really set up for cruise ships with really nice terminals that came later.  But the cruise company’s started to play with the idea to have ships going from Seattle. First to reduce the congestion in Vancouver, 2ndly to reduce costs by having at least a number of guests going to the ship directly instead having to be bussed to Vancouver. The newer ships could make the higher speed needed to get around Alaska from Seattle in seven days and so Seattle became a viable option.

Since then Seattle has come a long way and there are now 2 cruise terminals capable of handling 2 ships each. The downtown berth, occupied by Celebrity and NCL and Pier 91 more to the North and in use by Holland America and Princess. The latter makes sense as HAL and Princess are now part of the HAL group within Carnival and closely cooperating anyway. I had a look at both piers and although, the downtown one looks more glamorous, being close to the city, the HAL pier has a lot more space and better infrastructure. The difference in Taxi fare is $ 3.50 and that won’t break the bank either.

The bunker barge with the hose going inside the ship. On average a barge like this can pump 400 tons of fuel an hour.

So it was to this terminal that the Amsterdam came in the early morning, with the whistle working overtime as the low clouds only parted once the ship came closer to the dock.  The ship is on a 7 day cycle which means that fuel bunkering and provisioning takes place about every 14 days, and that was today. The bunker barge came alongside, stores and provisions came on board and another 1000 & 1 things needed attention. On a day like this every crewmember is busy, very busy, especially if the supervisor is also trying to give a few of his team a few hours off, which means I cannot do any trainings.

Therefore my focus was on 2 things. I had to go through immigration, which will be a weekly occurrence as the CBP wants an empty ship before embarkation starts ( I am part of that, as I am not an official crewmember at the moment ) and phoning my wife.  That took care of the morning and then administration called.  Plus I have to go to Guest Boatdrill as I am parked in a passenger cabin for this cruise.

I had some connectivity issues, so there are three posts in a row

As expected the white clouds did decend on us as soon as the ship came closer to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Here the combination of warm – sun heated – land and the cold water of the Northern Pacific being pushed into the Strait created an ideal temperature balance, or disbalance, depending on your point of view, to change the view around the ship into a small white world. Around sunrise the whistle started to blare and keep doing so until near mid day the sun finally burned the fog away.

As the Strait is a very busy area, serving the Whole Vancouver Area, but also the ports around the Puget Sound such as Seattle and Tacoma, there is constant stream of ships going both ways.  To make sure that they are all behaving themselves, The Traffic Management Stations were established. Further on the Strait has been divided in an outbound lane and an inbound lane. Outbound is on the Canadian Side and Inbound on the American side.  Since the 1970’s these systems have been introduced in all traffic hotspots and bottle necks in the world.

In the Strait they serve three important purposes;  A. creating some order in the way ships enter and exit the Strait near the Pacific. B. In the Strait set clear boundaries to keep fishermen away from the large ships, which sometimes can hardly see them C: create a system that makes it possible for Ships to safely split to various routes once approaching the Puget Sound. The latter resulted in several Round – and- about systems where ships are forced to follow a counter clockwise course and thus always safely pass behind another ship, instead of trying to cut across and run into a dangerous situation.

Ships like to sail in straight lines to save time and fuel and not every mariner is a “prudent” mariner as the law requires and hence the implementation of the VSS system, or Vessel Separation System.    This system forces ships to sail safe courses and you are only allowed to be a little bit creative in following the standard tracks, if there is absolutely no other traffic around.

This meant that the Amsterdam first sailed to the end of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and then made a 90 turn to the north. By that time the low clouds had been burned away and the guests had a beautiful sunny approach to Victoria.  This was by 16.30 in the afternoon and apart from seeing other cruise ships approaching (who also have to comply with the Jones Act before going to Seattle) wildlife gave quite a show as well.  A 100 feet from the ship a Humpback whale found the time to loudly applaud our presence with half jumps out of the water and beating the surface with its flipper.

There was a stiff breeze blowing to the North, and that meant that the ship had to go nearly broadside onto it to create a good lee for the pilot boat. With a strong ebbing tide running against the wind, the water looked a places as if a washing machine had gone wild, with white crested eddies.  Of course with the wind pushing against the Hull and the funnel and grabbing onto the balconies, it causes the ship to list, so if you do not know what is going one, it all looks very peculiar. The ships is turning away from the port and starts to heel.  But safetly first for the pilot and nice sailing second.

The ms Amsterdam docked where in this artist impression we can see the cargo ship. Victoria – Ogden Point.

The harbor of Victoria is located NE to SW and laying in a sheltered curve. So a true southerly wind it not much of a problem for a safe docking. Victoria is issue if a wind is blowing from the SE, as that brings it perpendicular onto the ship.  Today while there was a strong wind outside, it was fairly calm near the dock.

I did not go ashore for the evening call although there is a very nice 2^nd hand book shop in the main area of the town, but it has the tendency to close at 6 pm.  So I spent my time trying to figure out which Elevators on this ship are running on Emergency power. There is always one in each elevator bank, but which one varies from ship to ship.

Departure is set for midnight, with a 6 am arrival in Seattle. That means a quick dash through the Pudget Sound and with the sunny weather that we had all afternoon, I would not be amazed if the clouds come down again. So I will make it an early night and catch some sleep in case the whistle starts again.

Because the ms Amsterdam does the Sitka to Seattle run it has the option to go either inside Vancouver Island or to sail around it and re-enter the Inside Passage via Strait Juan de Fuca. Going inside Vancouver Island is the route that we all know very well. Sailing through Johnstone Strait and Seymour Narrows and ending up in Vancouver. It is sheltered and provides great scenery. The only disadvantage is that it takes much longer. The ship has to slow down for Seymour Narrows, for picking up pilots and there are several speed restrictions on the way such when passing Campbell River and the stretch to Victoria south of Vancouver. Because the ship sails straight from Seattle to Alaska which are all American ports, it has to call at one foreign port during the voyage. This in order to comply with the Passenger Service Act of 1886; although most people are more familiar with a similar act which is also applicable, the Jones Act.

The latter comes into play when you try to transport and land passengers while travelling between two American ports. Ships sailing from Vancouver do not have this issue as they start and end their cruise in Canada and thus according to American law start and end the cruise in a foreign port. Hence that you go through American Customs and immigration in the Vancouver terminal to make it all a bit easier. With the Seattle run that does not work and to comply with the rules it means that you have to call at Victoria, which we will do tomorrow evening. Victoria is located at the South East point of Vancouver Island and that makes taking the outside route around Vancouver Island a real good alternative. It only brings the dilemma that as a cruise guest you have to make a decision between visiting Victoria or seeing more of the Inside Passage. This also changes the whole schedule for having pilots on board.

Running the outside route of Vancouver Island. Before entering the Strait of Juan de Fuca

For this Seattle run it means that the American Pilot can be disembarked right outside Sitka, where pilotage water stops. Then the ship remains outside pilotage waters all the way to the Victoria – Sea buoy. Strait Juan de Fuca is wide enough to be considered open waters and that means for Canada that the inland water way pilotage starts at Victoria and for the USA at Port Angeles. To make sure that we as sailors do not do anything naughty, there is Radar and VHF coverage in the Strait to monitor all traffic moving in and out.

The border between Canada and the USA runs right through the middle of the Strait and thus this monitoring has also been nicely divided. Ships approaching or leaving Strait Juan de Fuca, report to Tofino traffic. This is a Radar/Radio Traffic monitoring station located on the northern – Canadian – shores of Strait Juan de Fuca and they keep an eye on who is coming in and going out. Once inside the Strait there is the moment that you switch you’re reporting over to Seattle Traffic. They keep an eye on all the traffic going all the way to the Seattle/Tacoma area or until you change course to the north and head for Canada. If you turn south, then you pick up a pilot at Port Angeles to visit any of the ports in the Puget Sound area. If you turn north towards Canada then you are transferred to Victoria Traffic and proceed to the pilot station there to obtain a pilot for any Canadian port, all the way up to Prince Rupert if needed.

When I first came on the coast here in 1979, I read an article in the National Geographic about how they checked & followed the traffic in Seattle. This was before good Radar coverage, AIS and real time satellite etc. The article showed photos of USCG men actually moving little models over a large size chart of the area. Intrigued about this, I managed to visit them during my cadet year and it was most interesting to see how it went and with the models how well they were able to predict if things were “hotting up” or not. Now that is all gone and the Control Station can see the whole area on radar screens and digital charts and follow the ships moving in real-time over the screens. That makes it even safer. The main challenge is now how to communicate developing situations to the crew on the bridge of the ships. Some crews, especially from China and Korea, speak highly original forms of English, and the well-meant advice from “Traffic” is not always understood or implemented the way it is intended.

So tomorrow evening we are in Victoria, which is, I think, the most British of all the City’s in Canada. The weather should be good, but as the sun shone in Ketchikan, it normally means that you have to pay for it. Thus the Captain might be looking for quite some time tomorrow at a very small world due to very low hanging clouds.

I had not been to Sitka for a number of years as the number of Holland America ships calling there decreased a number of years ago and since then with the increase of the fleet the other Alaskan routes gained more prominence. There was the defining moment in the relation between Sitka and the cruise company’s when Sitka declared a head tax of $ 50 per visiting guests. This resulted in a sort of attempt to kill the Golden Goose. At is was an anchor port, it was already a complicated place to visit and by now charging the guests more money for it, was just too much. Some companies withdrew all the cruise ships while other, including Holland America greatly reduced their presence. It took a while but eventually the head tax was repelled. But even if a company wants to return straight away it takes at least 2 years before this happens. 2 years is normally the time it takes before a new route and schedule makes it through the decision making process and back into the cruise brochure. Holland America is now present with 2 ships, the Oosterdam and the Amsterdam.

This is anchorage 1 and 2. The numbers 3 and 4 are even further away from Sitka tender harbour

There are four anchorages and also a regular dock located outside the city. If you dock there, then a shuttle bus system brings you to downtown Sitka. There are three regular anchorages and with regular I mean, that you can swing around freely on the anchor; whichever way wind or tide is pushing you. Then there is anchorage nbr 1, or inner anchorage. Here a regular seized ship cannot swing around at anchor, as the area with deep water is too small. That meant that only small cruise ships, or those with a stern anchor could go there and the stern anchor kept the ship from swinging around, and onto the rocks. Since the ships have Azipods, this has changed. As described in one of my earlier blogs, an Azipod is a sort of outboard engine – in the form of a pod- which hangs under the ship. It is designed and built to operate 24 hours a day. As a result it is used by keeping the ship in position and stop it from swinging around the anchor. If the weather is not too windy, large ships will now anchor at the inner anchorage.

The Amsterdam has Azipods, it was a beautiful day today and thus she occupied the inner anchorage. That reduced the tender distance and time greatly and that is good for the guests. In the heyday of Sitka, before the ill-fated Head Tax four ships could be at anchor in the bay and the one at anchorage nbr 4 would be looking at a 30 minute tender ride from the ship to the dock. Today the Amsterdam was the only ship in Sitka. Also the out of town dock was not in use. The ship arrived at 09.30 with an official scheduled stay from 10.00 to 1700 hrs.

I walked from the Hotel and could take the first tender back to the ship, coming on board while the guests were starting to assemble in the showlounge for the tender ticket procedure. The ship is on a charter cruise, chartered by Inspiration Cruises & Tours. The main difference of one of these sort of cruises is that instead having a headliner show, there is Michael W. Smith who gives a religious service. To make attendance for everybody possible, the guests have been divided in a RED and a BLUE group, as well as for the services as for dining. For the rest the Holland America entertainment offerings remain the same.

The Amsterdam makes seven day cruises from Seattle – via Tracy Arm – Juneau – Sitka – Victoria – Seattle. So I will be on board for 2 cruises and the tail end of the current one. If the weather holds out for the practical sessions then I should be able to deliver the same program as just done on the Volendam. Tomorrow the ship is in Ketchikan for a morning call. Arriving at 0700 hrs. and departing at 1300 hrs. then it is a fast run to get to Victoria for an evening call, two days from now. The weather for today and tomorrow is Alaska at its best and we are expecting a very sunny day in Ketchikan and that should please everybody.

Yesterday I left the Volendam after completing all the support that I could give. All but one of the trainees’s passed their exams and a whole pile of instructions, training power points and checklists were left behind to help the ship make a successful transition from a two alarm ship to a three alarm ship. Then came the journey from Vancouver via Seattle and Ketchikan to Sitka Alaska. For a reason unknown to me Alaska airlines maintains a Vancouver service with small planes and most of them are Turbo Props. It was interesting to see propellers warming up instead of hearing the whine of Turbines. The flight to Sitka is a sort of bus service with several stops. Most of the time a flight has a start and a final single destination. Everybody gets on and at the end everybody gets off. Not in this case, this was a flight from Seattle to Juneau with a stop at Ketchikan (20 minutes) and then Sitka (20 minutes) before flying to the final destination Juneau.

Alaskan people are very friendly, maybe because a lot know each other courtesy of the towns not being that big, and thus it normally does not take long before you are talking to your neighbor. First there was the interesting scene at Seattle airport of a group of men meeting up and going for a few days fishing together in Alaska. They came from various parts of the USA and I was not able to figure out what their connection was. But the plan was to go fishing, and having a good drink at the same time also scored high on the list of priorities. All seem to be glad to be gone from the daily scrutiny of “higher management” to whom they were all faithfully betrothed. The buddies were as excited about their coming adventure as a group of school boys.

In the plane I suddenly sat next to a colleague from the office, how that works I do not know. 200+ seats on the plane and the only 2 Holland America Line people on board end up next to each other. That gave us the chance for a good moan about all that could be better in the world. He left in Ketchikan for a visit to the Oosterdam and that meant that the Lady in the 3rd seat suddenly sat next to me as she moved inwards to give her outer seat to a rather large gentleman who joined in Ketchikan.

Now I got involved with what can only be described as the Great American Melting Pot. She was from Uzbekistan and had emigrated a long time ago to the USA. There she met a German and both became American and he ended up as a Doctor for the USCG. First on ships and he is now finishing his career for the USCG in Juneau shore side. As she cannot stand Alaska in the winter, she escapes to Seattle and is now studying law. He is close to retirement and then wants to settle for a while in Spain while she wants Italy, so they will probably end up in San Francisco as that is the only place they both can agree on as being nice. I always find it amazing to find out how diverse the background of most Americans is. Who says travelling is boring??

Things did not stop there as the big gentleman suddenly found out that he was in the wrong seat and his place was taken by a 54 year old grandmother who was flying from Ketchikan to Sitka to see her grandson play Base Ball. I had come across this before, where parents/ grandparents were hopping all over the state to see their children/grandchildren play in these (school) competitions. You can’t not drive here as there are no connecting roads and thus you go by air. That led all three of us to contemplate how much money Alaska Airlines must be making just on these family movements for these youngster tournaments. By 6 pm I had arrived in Sitka and 20 minutes later I was ensconced in the Westmark Hotel, which chain is owned by Holland America and thus the room fee remained in house. It just went from one pocket to the other, courtesy of me.

My exciting day did not end there, as opposite the hotel is a Chinese eatery. The Chinese-Japanese-Vietnamese – BBQ Restaurant to be precise. I had  never seen  those three names in combination with the letters BBQ so that had to be checked out. It was a good, simple and cheap (for Alaskan standards) restaurant but I never figured out the relation between the food and the BBQ.

While occupying myself with the local news flyer which is irreverently called “The Sitka Soup”. (www.Sitkasoup.com) a gentleman started talking to me announcing the fact that he was in Sitka for a mortar and concrete conference. Now I had never thought that Sitka would be THE town in the world where concrete makers would flock to, to discuss their latest mixing technology, but here he was. It seemed to be a very important occasion as well. Unless that was an excuse to go fishing with some buddies from the same background and this was the way to deceive “higher management” at home. I will have to ask the agent tomorrow if Sitka is indeed a major player in the Alaskan Concrete business. The Hotel is right opposite the fishing harbor of Sitka, so I can just roll my suitcase across the street and start my 17 day Amsterdam adventure.

Today a combined blog over two days. My time on the Volendam is coming to an end and in Vancouver I will transfer to the Amsterdam. So things are slowly “heating up” for the lack of a better word, a lot of instructions and practical training, plus the administration of 36 crew who are in training for their Lifeboat Assistant certificate.  Glacier Bay was a great day for the guests and Ketchikan was a great day for me, as it rained – summer rain – and that meant very little wind and so the lifeboat could go down for training.

It is a peculiar thing that guests care less (read – officially complain) about the rain when Ketchikan is the last port compared to when it is the first port. North bound (Ketchikan is most likely the first port of call) sightseeing is high on the agenda for everybody. It is time to experience the last frontier. Southbound the guests have already seen a lot of Alaska so shopping becomes a focal point. Walking around somewhere in Idaho with an Alaska Windbreaker suddenly becomes are very cool thing to do. And then rain does not matter that much anymore.

Today it drizzled for most of the day, but that did not stop anybody and Ketchikan commerce was having a great day. All berths occupied and a possible total of 11,000 potential shoppers ashore around noon time.  Even if only one in 10 buys a T-shirt, then that is still a lot of T shirts. Not counting fridge magnets and other trinkets. Some shops sell the really nice stuff, such as sculpted eagles and dolphins or killer whales and by looking at the prices, even if they would sell just one piece a day; they would have a very good day.

I was a bit shocked when I walked ashore in Ketchikan to find out that the Post Cards are disappearing. In the last 30 years I have been diligently collecting the local postcards that show port scenery. A great way of keeping up with the changing face of a town and the changing face of the cruise industry. Normally new cards are issued every year and the ships in port photographed. Thus I have the ships/ port scenes that were common in the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, up to now.  Running ashore to get the new batch for 2014 was going to be a quickie.  It was not.  A lot of shops did not have them anymore and the very few who did, were selling off last year’s stuff or from even before. Modern Media I suspected and when I talked to a shop manager that knew me from years gone by, the answer was yes. Hardly anybody buys postcards anymore, let alone send them home. You post on Facebook or send a selfie to your grandfather somewhere in Kentucky.  The lady also told me, as her sister was working at the local post office, the sending of postcards had gone down since 2010 by about 80% in Ketchikan. Wasn’t that the year the Smart Phone was invented??

I came home with only four postcards. Also from previous years but somehow I had not seen them before. I could not even find a 5^th, to get the discount of 5 for one dollar. I will have to start keeping an eye out if this is a worldwide phenomenon or typically of the North American market. I just wonder, do Chinese send postcards??

Docked behind us was the Seven Seas Navigator. Sailing for Regency/Seven Seas. I had not seen that ship before in real life although knew about her.  When Seven Seas started out, they bought a navy hull that was lingering on in a Russian Navy shipyard in St. Petersburg. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union the plan had been to build a new ship with antennas on the top, with one of it functions being to track submarines. The Soviet Union fell apart and the soviet military machine came more or less to a grinding halt.  So the Akademik Nikolay Pilyugin was sitting there half-finished in St. Petersburg. The hull was then bought by the originals sponsors of Regency, V- ships and the Carlson Group (who own Radisson) it was towed to the Marriott yard in Italy and finished as a 170 meter long, all outside Suite, Cruise ship for 490 guests.

Increase the water surface on which the ship rests and you improve stability.

When you build a cruise ship on a cargo or navy hull, you get stability problems as cruise ships are top heavy compared to cargo ships with their cargo low in the hull near or under the water line. To alleviate that stability problem, you have to widen the ship’s hull, creating more buoyancy for the same hull size. At the aft end it is called a duck foot as it does resemble that to a certain extent. Add more buoyancy on the sides and you call it sponsoons. The Seven Seas Navigator has a stylized combination of both, which makes it look at little bit odd, compared to the regular cruise ship boxes next to here. I was glad that I could have a good look at her.

Tomorrow we will be sailing through the Interior Passage and the weather for the afternoon looks good, so the guests should have a great afternoon. The Tide is at the perfect time of 21.30 and that means that the run to and through Seymour Narrows will be in day light. What can be a better ending to the cruise? I will be examining the Lifeboat Assistant trainee’s, so I will not see much of it, but then I have been there before.

My cabin is located right behind the Crows nest, just behind the bridge area. A great place to be, except when it is foggy. It is right under the whistle. And while the ship was in the middle of Lynn Canal, the clouds came down and it all changed into a very small world. Of course the bridge had to announce that to everybody by switching on the whistle. One long blast every 2 minute because of reduced visibility. I had hoped for another hour of sleep. Still every cloud has a silver lining, even if it is a very low hanging one I knew that there would be no wind during the day. It needs quite a bit of sunshine to get that Lynn Canal wind going and today there would not be enough of it.

So the good people who had been studying hard in how to handle a lifeboat were getting their practical today. Every group is different in behavior mood and attitude, and thus you approach each group differently when trying to get the best out of them. Having the entertainment department in a lifeboat is a totally different experience. An entertainer simply looks differently at the world than other crew. If they didn’t then they could not be entertainers, let alone good ones. Today’s group was made up from the Show – Cast, the singers and dancers who provide 3 different shows a cruise and if they were doing this ashore, that would be it. But on a ship, safety comes before guest satisfaction or any job you have to do, so today they were in the lifeboat. In real life they are communicators in the boat. Their function will be to explain to the guests step by step what is going on and to try to keep up morale.

The current cast of the volendam

Being creative people means that their lives are full of exuberance and emotion. Life has to be exciting.  They know that their function will be critical in saving the lives of 150 people in their boat and that is an exciting thing, so it could all be approached from the top of the world perspective. We were going on an adventure. None of them had ever steered a lifeboat so it was an exciting thing to look forward to.

A lifeboat does not offer the same glamour as the stage of the ms Volendam (Photo courtesy 3rd officer Amy MacDonald)

The only down part was, it was not glamorous. Once put into coveralls, gloves, helmet and lifejacket it looked more like a mining operation than anything else. But the weather was nice, overcast, no wind, a nice temperature and under the guidance of a 3^rd officer, Lifeboat nbr 4 motored around Skagway harbor. Carefully avoiding the boats from the Pacific Princess docked behind us and who were doing the same thing. Princess is also part of Carnival and they are going through the same changes as we are.

An hour and a half later the excitement was all over but we did not run into anything and we knew how to start, stop, go ahead, go astern, make a portside turn, made a starboard turn and how to get the boat back to the ship again. Then it was back to the class room, as they also have to do 2 computer based training courses, before the final exams coming Tuesday.  For the remainder of the day, there were two more practical classes for two other groups.

The last one was quite interesting, because when we were sailing around a tourist ferry and the Matanuska of the Alaskan Highway came in. With the orange roof we were visible from far away and I knew that they would be wondering what we were doing and getting worried. So the best thing was, while they were still at a good distance, was to get out of their approach as quickly as possible and as far as possible. I am ranting once in a while about six pack navigators in small boats, so I did not want to be held for one as well.  So the groups got an extra lesson in collision avoidance. Stay well out of the way, and keep your bow on a heading that makes for divergent courses, so the other ship does not get confused.

Tomorrow we are in Glacier Bay. Based on the weather today, Glacier Bay should be mainly overcast and wind still. But you never know what it really is going to be on the other side of the mountains with the ice cap being so close.  We will be at Bartlett Cove at 0700 in the morning and then steam up the bay to the glaciers.

I will be finalizing training material for most of the day, so when I leave on July 9^th to transfer to the Amsterdam the ship will have all the training materials it needs, power point presentations, checklists and instruction sheets, to implement the new alarm system successfully.