Coast Guard Looks At Reducing Risks For Small Ships
Tourists book cruises through Tracy Arm, a cliff-walled inlet about 40 miles southeast of Juneau, for close-up views of puffins, sea lions and calving glaciers.
Small cruise ships such as the 192-foot Spirit of '98 can navigate such narrow waterways, and their ability to do so is a major selling point.
Some, however, question whether this could present hazards as well.
Yesterday morning, the ship's master grounded the vessel after an object breached its hull, causing it to fill with water. Alaska Sightseeing/Cruise West, the Seattle company that owns the ship, said all 93 passengers were safely evacuated.
Most of the 27 crew members also were safely evacuated; several stayed on board to act as caretakers of the ship, and one reportedly suffered a light leg sprain, a Coast Guard spokesman said.
Two other small cruise ships have run aground in southeastern Alaska waters this summer, both of them operated by Alaska's Glacier Bay Tours & Cruises, headquartered in Seattle.
On July 19, the 103-foot Wilderness Explorer grounded in Idaho Inlet, about 70 miles west of Juneau, Coast Guard officials said. A month earlier, the 157-foot Wilderness Adventurer ran aground in Dundas Bay.
Passengers in both instances were evacuated safely, but in the June accident, 200 gallons of fuel were recovered from surrounding waters and another 60 gallons evaporated.
The Coast Guard, in light of the recent groundings, yesterday announced the formation of a task force to study ways of reducing the risk of accidents involving small passenger boats.
The task force will focus on vessels in the 50- to 200-foot range that carry passengers through remote areas of Alaska.
A possible problem such cruise ships can encounter is in the charting of the waterways they cruise, said John deCarteret, a retired Coast Guard captain who served as chief of the vessel inspection division in the Coast Guard's Washington, D.C., headquarters and chief of the Marine Safety Division in Seattle.
"Charts are like highway maps," deCarteret said. "You get much better maps of the highways than the (smaller) surrounding areas. . . . And you have to be careful of charts because they're not always entirely accurate."
Coast Guard officials said the small vessels that operate during the summer tourist season in Alaska typically sail in more hazardous and unmarked waters than larger cruise ships, at times in areas where communication with the Coast Guard and other vessels is limited or nonexistent.
Though Tracy Arm is a remote, narrow fjord, it also is popular for small cruise ships, and Coast Guard officials say it is well-charted.
"But certainly one of the things we want to look at (is) if there is something that was not charted," said Lt. Troy Dixon of the Coast Guard marine safety office in Juneau. "That this is a highly frequented area doesn't mean (such) things can't happen."
Coast Guard investigators also will look at tidal conditions in Tracy Arm, and try to pinpoint exactly where the collision occurred. Waters in Tracy Arm range from very shallow to very deep, and if "the (recorded) location was feet or yards off, that could make a dramatic difference," he said.
Coast Guard officials said the Spirit of '98 and other small cruise ships are thoroughly inspected each year. The Spirit of '98 passed its most recent annual Certificate of Inspection in June, Cruise West officials said yesterday.
Small cruise ships "are all pretty safe, and they're well-inspected," with some criteria evaluated on a quarterly basis, deCarteret said.
The Spirit of '98, a 15-year-old ship, also had a grounding in 1995 and two in 1993, according to Coast Guard records. But Cruise West officials say any time a vessel touches bottom or a rock, the incident is classified as a grounding; they said previous Cruise West incidents did not cause injuries to guests or crew.
The captain and the mate aboard The Spirit of '98 were more highly qualified than the law requires, said company operations manager Bryce Brockway.
The vessel master has a Coast Guard license that qualifies him to sail a ship up to 1,600 gross tons in size. The Spirit of '98 is registered as a 98-gross-ton ship.
When a vessel goes aground, the qualifications and judgment of the captain and his watchstanders are typically among the factors examined by investigators.
Seattle Times staff reporter Eric Nalder and researcher Miyoko Wolf contributed to this report.
Janet Burkitt's phone-message number is 206-515-5689. Her e-mail address is jburkitt@seattletimes.com