We walked up to the crow's nest just after dawn. I wanted to watch the Koningsdam sail into the dock. At first, our passage through the fjord leading into Skagway looked like any other part of our trip. As we closed in on our destination, though, the waters narrowed. Suddenly, our ship needed to navigate a narrow channel between several other large ships and two dozen smaller ones. Space between the vessels started to seem awfully close.
As we neared our docking point, I looked to the east where a Princess cruise vessel and one from the Celebrity fleet had settled. The Princess, oddly, was launching an escape boat. The passengers were fleeing or at least they were shuttling from their ship to some other.
At the same time, a ship behind us to the south from the Royal Caribbean line was closing in. We in the Koningsdam were getting near to colliding with a vessel directly to our north, a second ship from the Princess line. The near-collision was eerie. No one seemed worried. The captain sounded no alarms. All the same, the momentum of our multi-story vessels looked unstoppable. I was watching it happen.
The Princess turned sharply, as if backing into its parking space. I hadn’t known it could maneuver quite so deftly. It wouldn’t help the Koningsdam, though. I could tell. The bow of the Koningsdam was going to hit the Princess broadsides. Yet as close as we were, we also were turning. Our ship spun in place, or so it seemed. It moved like one of those trick cars that can turn all their wheels at once.
Later, my brother-in-law Norm clued me in about the azipods. They are combined units providing both a propeller and a steering mechanism. Each azipod allows for 360-degree rotation. Does the captain need to turn on a dime? No need for a rudder, just turn on the azipods! The big cruisers still have main engines and rudders; that's what they use when they want to plow straight ahead with a lot of power. When they need to pull a stunt, though, like making an impossible turn in a tight spot, it's azipods all the way.
Underneath the waterline, around the sides of the ship, the azipods wait, ready to be multi-directional engines like on a spaceship.
A side note: the Princess ship with escaping passengers? That really was pretty much how it seemed. The passengers were off-boarding via lifeboats. The reasons: earthquakes and avalanches.
The Princess cruise ship had to dock in its berth. There aren't many docks and they are reserved years in advance, so there was no choice. However, a recent avalanche had cut through the boardwalk area for the Princess line and buried it under tons of rubble. There was no path left for the Princess passengers to disembark in Skagway, not via their dock ramps. They had to use the emergency lifeboats to go into town.
Skagway
One of my earliest sights in town was the airport. It was populated by a dozen helicopters, most of them employed by the tourist industry, of course, during the summer. I would guess they do other jobs over the winter. From the ship's observation deck, we also got a good view of speedboats in the harbor, the tourist mecca of the closest streets, and buildings in the non-tourist parts of town, which were often hidden among the tree-filled hills.
It turned out that one of the speedboats was our morning destination.
The Ocean Raft Adventure
The description of this excursion was misleading.
1) The bottom of the boat is a thick aluminum alloy. It's not something I've seen on wooden rafts or rubber rafts.
2) The engine is a high powered racing model. Again, that doesn't say "rafting" to me.
3) The sides of the boat are inflatable like a river raft. Yay. They are exactly what you'd want on a bumper car, because they are ready for some contact with other boats, the shore, etc.
4) The passengers would not survive high-speed contact. The boat would be fine. However, the seats are saddles with no stirrups or seatbelts. So a big "bump" would launch everyone into the water (best case) at 70 mph.
That's never happened at Skagway, ever. Nothing like it, even. Still, that's what the rules of momentum dictate.
When I saw "raft adventure" in the excursion title, I thought I would be doing some steering and paddling. Instead, the captain gets licensed every year by the Coast Guard. She made the engine go breeeeeeeeee! Until she throttled it up a notch, which made it do breeeeeRAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRR and the little aluminum wedge skipped along the tops of waves like a Jet Ski or Waverunner. Thump, thump, thump. Twenty two passengers bobbed their heads up and down like we'd agreed to this.
My general advice is: read the excursion descriptions carefully.
As a speedboat crew, we were dressed like the Oompa Loompa Space Force in bright orange jumpers. There's a good reason for it; it gives the locals a laugh. Also, it was warm. The wind in the fjord was frigid and fast. I would happily take home one of those super-expensive jumpsuits right now even if it stayed in my closet for most of the year. As we picked up even more speed and did donuts to test our hand strength (the saddles had grips and they were essential), I thought: gosh, I'm warm.
I also thought: this is going to be the fastest wildlife spotting, ever. Can I identify a bald eagle as we pass a roost at 50 mph?
As it turned out, the captain knew what she was doing. We skipped across the waves from site to site, sure, but we slowed down to gawk at the wildlife, too. Since the captain (Alyssa, with her assistant Hannah) *did* spot eagles in trees at high speeds, our overall performance was excellent. At first, she pointed to an eagle, then another. She found a bumper crop of seals sunning on rocks along the shore. She located another colony on a different, less rocky shore. Soon, though, we were finding more and more eagles everywhere the boat turned.
"Wow, this is a really good day for the eagles," she commented.
It was a pretty great day for waterfalls around the fjord, too, but I gather most days are. We skipped from place to place, slowed, and gawked at the various features of the landscape, flora, or fauna. Since the tide was about 10 feet low (it gets up to 20 feet low sometimes), we got to see black mussels lining the rocky shores. It's a natural version of wearing Goth necklaces, bracelets, and bangles.
On the water, we spotted a rare species of sea duck, although by "rare" our captain meant they're out of season, not endangered. They don't get hunted. They're not even worried by our speedboats.
On the sides of cliffs, we pointed out waterfalls to one another. This included the unfortunately named Twin Waterfalls, which suffered damage in an earthquake tremor last year is now pretty much a single fall. I had the feeling the boat had to stop there because it had stopped there for years before. The site was still in the script. A note of uncertainty in the voices of Alyssa and Hannah indicated they weren't sure if the tradition made sense. Maybe they used to say, "The twins are the best! Taa daa!" and they haven't figured out how to replace that.
I would rate the excursion highly. The score, roughly, is
Seals: 25
Ocean ducks: 44
Eagles: 17
Adult passengers: 21
Twelve-year-old passengers: 1
By the end, our young lad begged to sit on the outermost saddle seat while the captain made the speedboat do donuts. The captain gave in to his request after some careful testing to make sure he wouldn't fall out. Then she spun a final set of donuts in the fjord. My inner twelve years thought it was fun, too.
Ocean Raft (Speedboat) Adventure: 10
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