Tourism

Last week, the cruise ship Crystal Serenity sailed into Nome and 850 of the cruise ship’s passengers were ferried in from the offshore vessel and took the day to tour the city.

Those passengers accounted for a roughly 25 percent increase in Nome’s population, and for local businesses that meant a hypothetical increase in profits.

Some business owners are saying their expectations for the day weren’t met.

Airport Pizza manager Ayyusue Katchathe said she only saw a handful of cruise ship passengers stop by to eat.

“We had a few customers, a couple pairs, a single, and maybe a group of four,” she said.

Katchathe thinks that most of the cruise ship traffic was directed to the blueberry festival and Front Street.

Planned in conjunction with the arrival of the ship, the Mini Convention Center hosted the blueberry festival, where Nome residents and vendors from around the Norton Sound region sold crafts and displayed local culture.

Nomemade co-business owner Kim Knudsen participated as a vendor at the festival.

Most of her sales came from people in the community despite the cruise ship’s arrival, she said.

“Even with some of the smaller items, I didn’t get the impression people were buying much,” she said. “They could take home smaller items of jams or jellies … but they just weren’t buying as much as the locals were buying.”

The Mini Convention Center was made an official stop for the tour buses shuttling passengers around Nome to encourage commerce.

The tourists came in waves but by afternoon had dwindled, Knudsen said.

Crystal Serenity passenger Marc Sola was a part of the morning peak at the blueberry festival, but he wasn’t really looking to eat at a restaurant here.

“I haven’t had anything to eat here,” he said. “I’d just had breakfast before I came here, so it wasn’t that big a deal to me.”

His plan for the rest of the day was to walk down Front Street and see the sights, he said.

Local businesses will get one more shot at selling their wares next year, however.

The plan for Crystal Cruises is to send an even bigger ship through the Northwest Passage in the late summer of 2017.

The Crystal Serenity cruise ship is making a 32-day voyage from Anchorage to New York City.

The ship is the largest vessel ever to travel the Northwest Passage with about 1,000 passengers aboard.

Meanwhile, the potential environmental impact of a journey of that scope has some worried.

Austin Ahmasuk, a marine advocate at the Kawerak regional non-profit corporation, is nervous about what happens when a floating city moves through a delicate region like the Arctic.

Ahmasuk refers to the Crystal Serenity as “a floating city.”

It certainly contains enough people, and produces enough waste.

“We have some very deep-felt and heartfelt concerns about what is happening in the Arctic,” he said.

Alaska Native communities rely on fish and marine mammals for subsistence.

Ahmasuk worries that cruise ships could damage the ecosystem and threaten that subsistence lifestyle.

What’s more, he does not think the cruise industry is listening.

“Honestly, I don’t know that our concerns are being fully heard,” he said. “I honestly cannot say that with a straight face.”

He’s not alone in his misgivings.

Marcie Keever, who directs the oceans and vessels program at an environmental group called Friends of the Earth, also is worried.

“When a ship like Crystal is going, because of its size, because of the length of time, there’s lots of reasons why a ship like that is a big concern,” Keever said.

In June, Friends of the Earth released their latest cruise ship report card, which grades cruise lines on their commitment to protecting the environment.

What grades did Crystal Cruises get?

Sewage treatment: F. Air pollution reduction: F. Transparency: F. It ranked 17 th out of 17 cruise lines.

Crystal Cruises has spoken out against the report card, and so has the Cruise Lines International Association.

Alaska branch president John Binkley said that people should look to the Coast Guard to regulate the industry, not to environmental groups.

“And similar to our political parties today, I believe that the Friends of the Earth are trying to divide people, really, with radical and unfounded claims,” Binkley said.

While the Crystal Serenity does not meet the standards set by Friends of the Earth, it does comply with all federal regulations.

The ship also has pledged to use cleaner fuel while it’s in Alaskan waters.

Even Keever admits that the Crystal Serenity is not at the heart of the problem.

“Our concern is not necessarily just the Serenity,” she said. “It’s the number and size of cruise ships and other ocean-going vessels that are going up over the top of the world.”

If the Crystal Serenity successfully completes its voyage, then other large ships likely will follow.

The Serenity already plans to return in 2017.

Keever points out that if those ships contribute to climate change in the Arctic, then they are making their own passage just a little bit easier — melted ice means a smoother trip.

“The only reason that this cruise is even possible is due, in small part, to the cruise industry,” Keever said.

The Crystal Serenity is expected to arrive Sunday in Pond Inlet.

The cast and crew of the American Public Media program “A Prairie Home Companion” cruised to Alaska this summer.

The ship they were on, the Maasdam, visited Kodiak on Wednesday.

While downtown was filled with hundreds of “Prairie Home” fans, retired host Garrison Keillor apparently doesn’t often come ashore, preferring to prepare for that night’s show aboard ship.

However, some locals who are ex-pat Minnesotans, eventually lured the lanky radio star from the fictional town of Lake Woebegone, Minnesota, off the ship to chat with locals.

Keillor has been to Alaska a few times.

“The interesting thing about Alaska is not the scenery,” he said. “You can find scenery a lot of different places in the world. The interesting thing to me is the people who are here. And that’s what’s worth coming to see, if you can possibly meet them.”

“But you know, the mountains, meh. I associate mountains with motivational posters, you know, that say things like ‘Dare to Dream;’ ‘All Great Achievements Start with a Single Footstep;’ and I’m old enough to know that’s not true.”

Keillor might have felt otherwise if Kodiak’s mountains weren’t obscured by a low ceiling of clouds during his visit.

Nevertheless, he had quite a bit to say about mountains, almost as if he were formulating his monologue on the spot, which meant a little election-year politics.

“You know, I look at mountains and I think of Henry Thoreau, and I don’t care for Thoreau. He was a great individualist, but he said, ‘Live the life you have dreamed of and you may be successful beyond your wildest hopes.’ And when I think of that, I think of Donald Trump,” Keillor said to the laughter of the crowd.

“So, the mountains, you can have. I’m a flatlander, and I like flat land. Which is majestic in its own way.”

Keillor spent about an hour talking with Kodiak residents who happened by City Dock, posing for pictures, answering and asking questions, and signing autographs.

While Keillor stayed close to the cruise ship, the Maasdam’s passengers came ashore en masse. Many got a quick orientation at the visitor center by Discover Kodiak volunteer of the year Jan Chatto.

“This is Kodiak Island. We are the second largest island in the united states. You can see from the map that Chastity is showing you, Chastity is our director, by the way. We have 112 miles of road on this island. That’s it. The rest is wilderness,” Chattow said. “We just celebrated the 75th anniversary of the refuge. FDR founded the refuge. It’s the jewel of the refuge system, we think. It was founded to protect the brown bears.”

Marilyn and Lewis Tognacci from Arizona have cruised with Keillor before, but this is the first time they’ve been to Alaska.

“It’s so much fun. It’s unreal,” Marilyn Tognacci said. “The man is a genius. He never stops.”

She said there is plenty of opportunity to mingle with Keillor and the “Prairie Home Companion” cast and crew on-board, and there is a wide variety of passenger activities.

“So much is offered, from knitting groups, dancing, history. And the music is so incredible. Opera, jazz, the singing, the picking. It’s just wonderful,” she said. “I can’t rave enough.”

The Maasdam and the “Prairie Home Companion” cruisers will return to Seattle this week via Glacier Bay, Sitka and Victoria, B.C.

The U.S. Northern Command and Coast Guard have launched a major field-training exercise off Alaska’s northwest coast.

Arctic Chinook is intended to demonstrate how local, state and federal agencies would respond to a simulated cruise ship accident.

Coincidentally, a big luxury cruise ship will sail through the area while the exercise is under way.

And to further complicate things, bad weather has just set in.

Arctic Chinook planners have had to incorporate some extra precautions into the exercise because of rough weather that set in over the weekend over the Bering and Chukchi seas, said Coast Guard Commander Mark Wilcox.

“We are having to adapt our exercise just slightly to accommodate what is going to be gale-force winds,” he said.

The National Weather Service had issued a gale warning effective through Tuesday evening for waters off the Seward Peninsula, where the exercise will be held.

It’s also where the luxury liner Crystal Serenity and its 1,600 passengers and crew will soon be traveling through en route to the Northwest Passage and on around to New York.

The weather service predicted the storm would whip up 35- to 45-knot winds off Alaska’s coast, and it issued a winter storm warning and forecast up to 8 inches of snow on the western end of the North Slope.

The Coast Guard and the U.S. Northern Command, or NorthCom, scheduled Arctic Chinook for now because usually it’s the best time of year to conduct such an exercise, Wilcox said.

“We place a lot of these sort of key events – we time them for August, because we expect to get the best weather and least sea ice,” Wilcox said. “Mother Nature doesn’t always let us move forward as planned.”

Wilcox said the exercise is intended to test the ability of local, state and federal emergency responders to rescue 200 passengers from a cruise ship that’s run into trouble in those waters, The scenario calls for bringing passengers to shore around Tin City, near the westernmost tip of the Seward Peninsula – where rescuers would face their next logistical challenge. (This morning, organizers announced they’d moved the evacuation portion of the exercise to the Kotzebue Long Range Radar Site, due to rough weather.)

“So, how do we keep people alive on the beach while the secondary round of rescue assets that will bring them to an Arctic hub or village – how do we keep alive in that time span?”

The exercise scenario called for responders on the beach to triage the evacuees, sending uninjured passengers to Nome, then on to Anchorage. Fifty people will play the role of injured passengers, who’ll be taken initially to Kotzebue, said Army Col. Michael Forsyth. He’s chief of staff for Alaskan Command, the NorthCom subordinate agency based at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson that’s helping the Coast Guard manage the training exercise.

“There’s about 50 folks who will actually get in lifeboats. They are going to … casualties that the municipal community will have to react to.”

Forsyth said Arctic Chinook will involve up to thousand people from several agencies, along with three ships, about a dozen aircraft and many other types of equipment. He said agencies involved include U.S. Army Alaska; Air National Guard; federal Homeland Security Department and its state counterpart and the Arctic Domain Awareness Center, Homeland Security’s University of Alaska-affiliated research arm.

“Canada is also contributing to the exercise a helo, a fixed-wing aircraft and also dozens of personnel.”

Forsyth said other Arctic nations are sending observers. He said management of the complex exercise will be done out of the Alaskan Command’s facilities at JBER, where many of the agencies already have offices.

There has been a little turbulence since the October sale of Wings of Alaska to Fjord Flying Service, but the new staff is continuing to work out the kinks.

Aldwin Harder has only been the manager of the new company for a few months, but he’s got a clear vision of where he wants the business to go.

“Haines is a market that we’d like to serve better,” Harder said.

Harder was meeting with businesses and residents recently in Haines.

In October, Wings was sold by its parent company, SeaPort Airlines, out of Portland.

Gustavus-based Fjord Flying Service, a charter business, bought Wings.

The joint company still offers charters from the Fjord side and scheduled commuter flights from Wings of Alaska.

“We’re basically a brand new company that started in 2016,” Harder said. “We’ve combined the assets now and have formed a new airline specifically to serve the local villages of Hoonah, Haines, Skagway, Gustavus and the city of Juneau.”

Since the sale, the transition has been a little rough, Harder said.

Fewer planes and scaled back service caused some customers to balk.

With the two airlines’ business strategies and methods melding more and more, the day to day is progressing a little more smoothly, he said.

“Currently we’re operating four total aircrafts, soon to be five,” Harder said. “We have three (Cessna) 207s and two 206s – one of the 207s is in the rebuilding process and will be out later on in the summer. They all fly VFR (visual fight rules), weather permitting. Safety is always our first goal.”

The fall sale of Wings to Fjord included all ground assets, but not the planes.

The new company exclusively serves Southeast Alaska.

All the owners – there are a handful scattered around Southeast – are focused on creating a “family” of employees and clients, Harder said.

“I think what sets us apart is out local service, our local ownership, the ability to address the problems that happen on a very personal level,” he said.

At the Haines office, station manager Marlene Wilson agreed that there was a little turmoil when the transition first got underway, but mostly because people thought the airline shut down.

“They still come in in disbelief that we’re here,” she said. “We never have closed our doors, we’ve always been open. We just went from one owner to another.”

After Wings was sold, the business did lose its nine-plane fleet, getting three smaller planes instead.

For the first little while, Wilson said, they were just flying charters but they never stopped flying completely. The company is doing scheduled flights and freight again, but it no longer operates the mail flights.

Wilson said now, in the midst of a busy summer, things are going well. The online reservations option is up and running, and more planes have been added to the roster.

“Basically, we’re started brand new, as if we’re a brand new company starting out because of the rumors and people just now realizing that we’re still in service.”

Wings of Alaska has been operating in Southeast for 30 years.

It, along with Alaska Seaplanes, offers multiple daily flights between Haines and Skagway, and other communities in the region.

They plan to expand, but they just need to get through the winter first, Wilson said.

“Our main focus right now is just to deal with our passengers, and get our passengers back on board,” she said.

Birger Vorland is the captain of the Crystal Serenity, and he doesn’t shake hands, he touches elbows.

“Make sure everybody stays healthy,” said Vorland. “It’s a Crystal handshake.”

The Crystal Serenity is carrying 980 passengers on a 32-day journey from Anchorage to New York City.

The cruise ship is the largest ever to navigate the Northwest Passage, a voyage of many other firsts for Crystal Cruises, according to Captain Vorland.

“I mean, this is the longest single cruise we’ve ever made,” he said. “And it is the most expensive cruise we’ve ever made. And it’s the one that sold out the fastest — 48 hours, it was basically gone.”

A trip like that comes with a lot of pressure.

“The captain never sleeps heavy,” Vorland said. “He always sleeps a little light.”

Vorland’s biggest concern is the ice that the ship might encounter further north.

The ship is equipped with searchlights, an ice radar, thermal-imaging technology and a Canadian navigation program called IceNav, all to detect that ice.

The icebreaker vessel Ernest Shackleton joins the cruise in Ulukhaktok.

Vorland thinks that ice isn’t all bad.

“This goes two ways,” he said. “We don’t want ice, but we do want ice because if we don’t have ice, we don’t have polar bears.”

This is one paradox of the Crystal Serenity’s current voyage.

The ice is the greatest threat to the ship, but it’s also why the ship is traveling through the Northwest Passage in the first place.

Crystal Cruises Land Programs vice president John Stoll thinks the passengers are on this cruise for the Arctic wildlife sightings, first and foremost.

“So if we have to, we’re going to convince the captain to go where we need to go to spot the wildlife,” Stoll said.

In the Crystal Serenity’s open, airy Palm Court lounge, Stoll showed off the ship’s Cineflex system.

Giant television screens line the dance floor.

During wildlife sightings, the onboard cameraman will zoom in on the animals and broadcast those images to the screens, as well as to the TVs in all the state rooms.

The system has already been put to use. On their way to Nome, they spotted a pod of whales.

On this voyage of new experiences, one thing isn’t new: the passengers.

Keith Steiner is a passenger who has sailed 81 cruises with Crystal. He said he’s seeing a lot of familiar faces onboard.

“Many of them are seasoned cruisers,” Steiner said. “I think all but six people have sailed Crystal at least one time or more beforehand. So that’s very unique. You have people who cruise every year, they cruise for many days.”

There are even three passengers who currently live full-time aboard the Crystal Serenity.

Although many passengers participated in a variety of tours while in Nome, approximately 200 passengers never deboarded the ship.

To some, the Northwest Passage is a chance for a new adventure, and to others, it’s cruising as usual.

Back in the Palm Court lounge, Captain Vorland looked out the window at the rain.

He sees himself as part of tradition as well.

Not a tradition of cruising, but a tradition that hearkens back to Roald Amundsen, who became the first explorer to travel the Northwest Passage by ship in 1906.

Amundsen was Norwegian, just like Vorland. And like the seafarers of old, Vorland isn’t above a little superstition.

“I told my wife when I went on the world cruise in January, I said, ‘Honey, when I come back from the world cruise, I’m going to stop shaving,” he said. “I am going to keep it that way until all the ice is behind me, and then I’m going to shave again.’ Once we leave Greenland, and all the ice is behind us, the beard is going off.”

On this voyage, Captain Vorland isn’t taking any chances. Not even with his facial hair.

More stories about the Crystal Serenity

• Nome greets massive Serenity with drums, dance, festivity
• On the scene with the Crystal Serenity 
• Is the Arctic ready for the Crystal Serenity? 
• Crystal Serenity to arrive in Nome Sunday
• Northwest Passage cruise marks turning point in Arctic tourism