The Ships Keep Coming!

Since last Monday, we have had four more ships. Monday had us servicing the Island Princess. On Wednesday we had the Carnival Spirit, which will stop in Whittier every other week. Yesterday we had the Sapphire Princess, and this morning, the m/s Veendam docked in Seward. She will sail in a little over an hour, and head back to Vancouver.

All of these ships have kept us rather busy. I have been lucky enough to not be assigned to more early morning shifts. Well, I ought to explain that early has become a relative term. If I get to sleep until 4:30am, I feel like I am sleeping late! On Tuesday and Thursday, when we had no ships, I just did evening rail duty. I would go to the train station and meet the southbound train, and pick up the guests and bring them to their hotels. The Alaska Railroad always tells they will be in at about 8:15pm, but they run on a fairly loose schedule. Reality is that the train will arrive some time between 8:00pm and 11:00pm! Both nights I worked at the station, the train came in around 8:50pm.

On Wednesday, as I mentioned, we had the Carnival Spirit in town. That was complete chaos on the dock! Their disembarkation procedures were not nearly as well organized as Holland America or Princess. I ended up getting a very crowded coach with people going everywhere. Usually everyone on the coach would be going to the same place, but in an effort to calm the chaos, and get people on their way, they simply loaded my coach up until the seats were taken and baggage bays were packed to the gills. It was an interesting trip to the airport and the hotels and the hospitality center. I was just hoping no one got off where they did not belong. Luckily, no one did. Besides being crowded it was a pretty normal trip. I made several trips between downtown and the airport, and then returned to the ship with a load of guests. By the time I returned to the ship, I guess they had a better idea of what was going on at the dock, because things were organized a little better.

On Friday, I was scheduled for a day off. The company was doing a trip to the Kenai Fjords, and I decided to go along, because I didn't have to work and I have heard a lot of good things about that trip. Well, when I signed up for that, dispatch realized that meant they had a driver going, and they had needed a coach shuttled to Seward. Tim took one other coach that also needed to go there. These were two well used coaches, which had both seen better days. I got a mile out of town, and the air conditioning broke on mine. I also discovered that I was unable to get it over 45mph. At one point, I completely left Tim in the dust. Later when we stopped to stretch, he mentioned that, and I started to wonder if my speedometer was accurate. Once we got going again, we headed up a hill and I saw that Tim was right behind me. I asked him to clock me. My speedometer read 29mph. It was a steep hill, and I had the gas pedal on the ground. Well, Tim radioed back and said his speedometer was reading 45mph. I was right, my speedometer was broken. So all that time when I thought I couldn't get it over 45mph, I was really having a hard time getting over 65 or something. It was an interesting drive. We parked the coaches by the dock in Seward, and then the driver for the Kenai Fjords trip picked us up there a while later.

We were driven the short distance to the small boat harbor where we got on the boat for the Kenai Fjords Tour. It was an 85 foot catamaran, called Aialik. The weather was not that great, but it was a free day cruise! It was a six hour, 100 mile trip, with wildlife, mountains, and a glacier all included. We got started, and despite the storms, we were fine as long as we stayed in Ressurection Bay. We spent a bit of time in the bay, but eventually we had to go out in the ocean to get over to another bay. The ocean was a bit rough. Well, rough was an understatement for most people. A lot of people got sick, I guess they just could not take twelve foot swells! It was a little rough, but once we got into the other bay, it was calm again. The only catch was we had to come back through the same ocean. While on the trip, we saw a lot of wildlife. There were a ton of birds, including puffins. We also saw humpback whales and orca, or killer, whales, and porpoises. There were also sea lions and sea otters. It was sweet! We saw two glaciers, which was sweet. We were able to get fairly close to one. They are rather huge. It is a lot of ice in one place! After looking at the glacier for some time, we had to return to Seward. That meant heading back out into open ocean, and twelve foot swells. Actually, as it turned out, the storms had calmed a little. People still got sick, but the trip around the cape was less rough. I had no problems with it going in either direction. I have seen better and worse weather at sea.

Yesterday, the Sapphire Princess was in Whittier, and things actually went pretty normal. Princess usually has things pretty well organized at the docks, and yesterday was no exception. After bringing several people to the ship, I returned to Anchorage and shuttled people to the airport. I did not have a lot of people on the coach, but they had a LOT of luggage. It was what we call a Tetris trip. There was so much luggage, that each piece had to be individually fitted in a specific orientation to maximize the space. It was rediculious. There was at least 4,000lbs of luggage. It was crazy. I could not believe it! Other than that, it was a fairly typical ship day.

Today the m/s Veendam was in Seward. I drove a van today, instead of a coach. I shuttled some dock employees to Seward and then I did something called the NLV Express. My job was to take anyone who had been quarentined for medical purposes while on the ship, and shuttle them to their hotels, away from everyone else. Basically they were still in quarentine while on my van. There were only two of them though, which is rather fortunate on a ship that carries 1,800 people!

Tomorros we have the Coral Princess in Whittier. I am actually not scheduled to go to the ship, but even on other days where that has been the case, I usually find myself on the dock eventually! I will be dropping people off at the train station for the northbound train to Denali and Fairbanks. Later, I will be taking people on the Portage Glacier Tour, and I will get to go along with them! It is a boat trip across Portage Lake to the glacier that feeds it. It will be fun I think.