Holland America Blog
Safety Officer
Holland America Blog Has Just Posted the Following:
By 08.00 in the morning, the ship lined up for entering Strait Juan de Fuca. Because it is such a busy waterway the strait has been divided into an ingoing route and an outgoing route. It is called a Vessel Traffic Separation Scheme. (VTSS) The peculiar thing with Juan de Fuca is, is that the VTSS scheme straddles two countries.* The outbound lane is in Canadian Waters and the Inbound Lane is in American Waters. To make sure that everybody is behaving themselves there is also a Traffic Control system.* *Again also divided between the two countries. The approach to the entrance is handled by the Canadians. It is called Tofino Traffic and named after the town where the Control station is located. All inbound and outbound traffic has to call in here to get cleared and to receive last minute information if needed.* They already know if a ship is coming as a pre-clearance message has to be sent a certain number of hours before entering the area covered by the system. The message results normally in a pre-clearance when you are inbound. If the message is not received, there would be the option that you have to wait until clearance is given.** Once Tofino has approved your coming into the Strait, you can sail in and when about half way, you are handed over to Seattle Traffic which monitors the traffic further in the Strait and the traffic going to the Pudget Sound area.* At various locations you have to call in with a position report (To verify what they see on their Radars) and receive the latest traffic update. Once through the Strait you stay with Seattle Traffic if you continue into American Waters or you are handed over to Victoria Traffic if you are turning north towards Victoria or Vancouver.* *If you forget to call in, there will be quite quickly a berating voice on the VHF to ensure that you do not forget it a second time. Although English speaking on the ships has greatly improved in the last 20 years we still have occasionally […]
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By 08.00 in the morning, the ship lined up for entering Strait Juan de Fuca. Because it is such a busy waterway the strait has been divided into an ingoing route and an outgoing route. It is called a Vessel Traffic Separation Scheme. (VTSS) The peculiar thing with Juan de Fuca is, is that the VTSS scheme straddles two countries.* The outbound lane is in Canadian Waters and the Inbound Lane is in American Waters. To make sure that everybody is behaving themselves there is also a Traffic Control system.* *Again also divided between the two countries. The approach to the entrance is handled by the Canadians. It is called Tofino Traffic and named after the town where the Control station is located. All inbound and outbound traffic has to call in here to get cleared and to receive last minute information if needed.* They already know if a ship is coming as a pre-clearance message has to be sent a certain number of hours before entering the area covered by the system. The message results normally in a pre-clearance when you are inbound. If the message is not received, there would be the option that you have to wait until clearance is given.** Once Tofino has approved your coming into the Strait, you can sail in and when about half way, you are handed over to Seattle Traffic which monitors the traffic further in the Strait and the traffic going to the Pudget Sound area.* At various locations you have to call in with a position report (To verify what they see on their Radars) and receive the latest traffic update. Once through the Strait you stay with Seattle Traffic if you continue into American Waters or you are handed over to Victoria Traffic if you are turning north towards Victoria or Vancouver.* *If you forget to call in, there will be quite quickly a berating voice on the VHF to ensure that you do not forget it a second time. Although English speaking on the ships has greatly improved in the last 20 years we still have occasionally […]
Click here to view the article.
