Holland America Blog
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Holland America Blog Has Just Posted the Following:
Lesbos is a rather large island and Mytilene is for island standards quite a big town. As a result it has a reasonable size harbor with two ferry docks. The only problem for us was that the draft allowed in there is a maximum of 7 meters and the Prinsendam goes just a little bit deeper. Also the ferries were running and thus even with the correct draft we might not have been able to dock. As a result we anchored today and had to run a rather wobbly tender service due to the incoming swell. Still we made it while we have not been so lucky in the past. On arrival we had a bit of excitement as we saw the Greek Coast Guard sailing towards the port with a boatload of Refugees or Illegal Migrants depending on what you want to call them. These were not coming from Africa but from Turkey, although looking at the ski color I suspect they had travelled via Turkey to get into the European Community that way. At the moment there are migrants /refugees everywhere and the Coast Guards of Greece, Malta and Italy pick them up by the hundreds every day. Libya is collapsing, things are not going well in Syria and other areas of the Middle East and 1000’s are on the way.* I could not make sense out of this group though as there were no families; only males and all in roughly the same age group of between 20 and 30.* Let’s hope that this can be resolved in the near future but it will take some courage and creative thinking from our political leaders. I saw them coming ashore as I had taken the first tender over with the Security officer to see the town as I had never been here. Both times when the Prinsendam was scheduled to call here I had to cancel due to the swell and wind and sailed over to another island. There are plenty of them around and I just asked Shore Excursion which one they wanted. The locals are quite […]
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Lesbos is a rather large island and Mytilene is for island standards quite a big town. As a result it has a reasonable size harbor with two ferry docks. The only problem for us was that the draft allowed in there is a maximum of 7 meters and the Prinsendam goes just a little bit deeper. Also the ferries were running and thus even with the correct draft we might not have been able to dock. As a result we anchored today and had to run a rather wobbly tender service due to the incoming swell. Still we made it while we have not been so lucky in the past. On arrival we had a bit of excitement as we saw the Greek Coast Guard sailing towards the port with a boatload of Refugees or Illegal Migrants depending on what you want to call them. These were not coming from Africa but from Turkey, although looking at the ski color I suspect they had travelled via Turkey to get into the European Community that way. At the moment there are migrants /refugees everywhere and the Coast Guards of Greece, Malta and Italy pick them up by the hundreds every day. Libya is collapsing, things are not going well in Syria and other areas of the Middle East and 1000’s are on the way.* I could not make sense out of this group though as there were no families; only males and all in roughly the same age group of between 20 and 30.* Let’s hope that this can be resolved in the near future but it will take some courage and creative thinking from our political leaders. I saw them coming ashore as I had taken the first tender over with the Security officer to see the town as I had never been here. Both times when the Prinsendam was scheduled to call here I had to cancel due to the swell and wind and sailed over to another island. There are plenty of them around and I just asked Shore Excursion which one they wanted. The locals are quite […]
Click here to view the article.
