“Alaska’s Little Norway” had its first cruise ship visit of the season on Friday, April 25. And while other communities are slated to have more cruise ships visiting this summer, Petersburg is getting fewer.
“Outside of Petersburg, the numbers are all up. Everybody else has seen increase,” said Harbormaster Glo Wollen. “Petersburg is not and it seems to be fairly unique.”
Just 10 cruise ships are scheduled to visit town this summer, and the local harbor department is expecting 96 stops total in Petersburg’s ports. That’s fewer boats and stops than the town had last year.
“We’re down a percentage,” Wollen said, “[but] within that is a big change to what we can offer. And it will affect the entire operation.”
That “big change” involves a frequent visitor, American Cruise Lines (ACL). The cruise ship company is doubling its stops in Petersburg this year, and bringing a second ship into the rotation.
“If they (ACL) hadn’t doubled, we’d be down considerably,” Wollen said. “Until we got word that American Cruise Lines was going to up their numbers that much … we were down like 40% from last year.”
Although adding more ACL stops to the town’s cruise ship schedule helped compensate for fewer overall visits to Petersburg’s port this year, Wollen said it comes with an added obstacle.
Both ACL ships — the American Constellation and American Constitution— are about 269 feet long and bring up to 170 passengers each. But there’s not much space in Peterbsurg’s harbors to share between the local fleet and cruise ships.
In order to make room for ACL’s additional overnight stays, harbor staff must do more rearranging than in years past, including evacuating users from C float, which houses larger yachts and tenders, when the cruise ships come to tie up.
“We’ve never had to do that before. That’s a big change to what we can offer,” Wollen said. “And it’s not a win for the harbor at all to displace the tender fleet.”
Moving boats around is something the harbor department does regularly during the annual cruise ship season. But Wollen said coordinating for more stays from ACL will be a challenge, for now.
“It’s going to be a lot of extra work for the staff … but we hope that it is a temporary thing,” she said. “We hope that we’ll limp through this year, and maybe next year, and have an available mooring for American Cruise Lines into the future.”
American Cruise Lines and the Petersburg Borough are working on a potential partnership to build a new dock extension near town. That would give the company a guaranteed place to tie up their cruise ships in future tour seasons and provide the borough with more moorage space to work with year-round. ACL officials have said that the infrastructure would belong to the borough to control.
“I think it’s a good opportunity for the community to partner and maintain control and ownership,” said Wollen. “American Cruise Lines does not want to end up owning the facility … they’re essentially buying themselves a spot to tie up.”
Currently, the company is offering to pay for at least half of the construction costs and would lease part of the float from the borough. Wollen said the borough entered a similar partnership years ago with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s research vessel, the Kestrel.
“We really didn’t have a place to tie her up … we [partnered] in building the float that she ties up to … and both contributed 50% of the design and build of that float,” said Wollen. “And there she sits. And it’s been an amazing partnership … I look at this [partnership] as something like that.”
Plans for the project are still in the works. Wollen said it will continue to be a community conversation and a funding proposal is expected to be brought before the borough assembly to consider.
The first cruise ship from ACL coming to Petersburg this summer is scheduled to tie up at the port dock on May 17.
