RDVIK2016

Viking Rhine Getaway cruises start seven days a week from Amsterdam and Basel, so the boats on other itineraries European Sojourn, Grand European Tour, Paris to Swiss Alps (from Basel) would all have to start on the same day as another Viking cruise. There have even been times when they have two boats traveling on the same timetable on popular itineraries.

Nice that Zons looks to have a nearly complete city wall!

I am prone to take those 1.5m and 1.6m drafts of the Viking Longships with a grain of salt. Actually Binnenschifferforum lists Egdir as having a draft of 2.0 m. The draft can be a bit variable, although not much on a passenger vessel. Longships' maximum draft is just about always listed as 2 meters and it seems that they operate as if their minimum operational draft is not less than about 1.8m. RDVIK

"Kaub at 31 cm" doesn't mean that the river is 12.2 inches deep in the navigation channel. When then Pegel scale is at 31cm then the channel is 143 cm deep. Some ships to have draughts less than 1.4m so can get by depending on a couple of other factors.

Wow! Are the Pegel gauges usually marked below zero? Some of the Pegels are given in such I high number it would seem not to be necessary to extend the scales below zero.

My wife and I will be cruising the Rhine next April and are confident water levels should not be a problem (unless you have a huge snowfall this winter with heavy spring rains - then maybe too much water). So we assume we will dock in Rüdesheim. Is the Asbach Uralt distillery worth a visit? - Somewhere I read they severely reduced the amount of the distillery available on tours. RDVIK

However if you did not take the bus from Strasbourg to Koblenz/Braubach you might miss the excursion boat through the Gorge. (I don't think they are busing passengers all the way to Cologne. Yet!)

For the last couple of weeks it does not look like any of the Viking ships on the Basel to Amsterdam itinerary have gone past Strasbourg and coming from the other direction from Amsterdam they get as far as Koblenz or Braubach. As far as being docked in Strasbourg for 2 to 3 nights, it might be a good opportunity to stay ashore late and not have to worry about getting back in time to get underway. Now that the Covid restrictions have eased the tram runs again from Kehl to Strasbourg. From the dock it can't be much more than a five minute walk to the tram stop and a 20 minute ride to the middle of Strasbourg. If you are good walkers you could walk across the bridge. RDVIK

Cruise Critic needs WOW and Sad face emojis! I sure don't want to give this a heart or a thank you.

Very interesting. Alisa seems to have a shallow draught and has come all the way from a shipyard on the Sava river in Serbia. This will have to be an important consideration for all cruise companies. I wonder if they might have to give up some features for that shallow draught. I saw another boat from that shipyard in Serbia with a draught of 1,3 m, but still with a length of 135 m. Viking has taken delivery of its last Longships I think. Their next series will probably be able to sail shallower waters.

notamermaid, Thanks for mentioning that article. It was surprising to find the entire article with not paywall. Is it just that SZ are allowing articles on this subject to be read for free? FAZ also? Not sure if you intended to include the link to the SZ, so I found it and another article from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. And as you say translation programs do a good job (except they don't often attempt to convey the subjunctive mood (Konjunktiv I). grins RDVIK https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/schifffahrt-niedrigwasser-bringt-binnenschiffer-in-die-bredouille-dpa.urn-newsml-dpa-com-20090101-220812-99-359903 https://www.faz.net/agenturmeldungen/dpa/niedrigwasser-bremst-binnenschifffahrt-in-bayern-18238760.html

Back on page 21 of this topic, post #510, is a chart that shows average river levels though the year compared with this year. It appears that September and October do not, on average, see better levels than July and August. Not very promising is it? In 2018 the lowest levels were in October. Things can work out though. On the Danube in October 2019 we were on a Viking Ingvi that could not get from Bratislava to Budapest. I appreciated having a delay in Bratislava before the boat moved to Komárom, Hungary. What a neat little city is Bratislava! From Komárom we were bused to Budapest for our excursions and back to Komárom. Viking did an unbelievable job getting us to our respective excursions and arranging for dinner in a large banquet hall/restaurant and after that we had an amazing tour of the Jewish Quarter. There was another glitsch out of Viking's control when we could not go up to palace hill with the Fishermen's Bastion because traffic was diverted due to Putin being there to visit his pal Orbán. So we had a tour up at the Citadel which wasn't too bad. I was so thankful though that we were still going to have the extension in Budapest - so we bused back in to the hotel the next day.

Unreal photos of a few spots on rivers in Europe at the link. https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/08/11/in-pictures-europes-mighty-rivers-are-drying-up-in-the-climate-driven-drought

Hi cruisinlawn, These measurements of river depth have had me scratching my head. Thanks to notamermaid and some reading elsewhere I think I am beginning to get a grasp on it. So I am going to give this whole thing a shot if only to help organize my own thoughts and to see if someone helps me by pointing out errors. Like notamermaid said the Pegel number is read on a scale placed at the embankment like an oversized yardstick. The placement of the 0 point of the scale is somewhat arbitrary, but you want it in such a position the river surface never falls below the 0 mark. This number changes every day. The authorities have Pegel records going way back and determine a Pegel below which the river surface falls 20 days a year. At Kaub that is a Pegel of 78cm. (This number is called the Gleichwertiger Wasserstand or GLW). Then they measure down from the the 78cm mark to the bottom of the river in the navigation channel. At Kaub that is 190cm. This just the depth under the GLW (Tiefe unter GLW - TuGLW) The captains will have all the GLW and other data on readily available tables. So when they have a Pegel of 50cm at Kaub that is 28cm below the mark at which the navigation channel is 190 cm. Therefore the actual water depth is 190cm - 28cm = 162cm. If your ship needs more than 162cm to pass then you'll need to do a ship swap. To figure out if your particular ship can pass you'll have to know the draught of the vessel, if there are reports of debris on the bottom, and how risk-averse your captain is. Viking Rhein Getaway captains have the luxury of knowing if they have a sister ship coming the other way so they can both stop short of the shallow spots and swap passengers. By the way on the Danube they don't use GLW. They have a different way to figure navigation depth. I hope I got that close to correct. RDVIK

About this gravel that gets moved around and reduces the depth of the navigation channel: Do you know how often they attempt to measure it or they know when a ship scrapes it? I assume gravel makes up a Fehltiefe, correct?

These are definitely going on a list of favorite German words: Unter- and Überschreitungswarscheinlichkeit. We could wager the over-under for each day.

OK, now I get it. We did the Viking Romantic Danube in 2016 when they were still ending the cruise by traveling the canal to Nürnberg rather than terminating at Regensburg. The spot you point out is where they tied up to have us transfer to buses for the tours of Nürnberg. While we were in town the boat moved further up the canal to Erlangen and that is where we were docked overnight. From there we took the coach to Prague for an extension.

Is that dock at an industrial area in Erlangen?

I have been following the Viking ships on their Rhine Getaway itinerary. None have sailed through the Rhine Gorge for several days. They all stop short of the Gorge whether they are traveling upstream or down. They swap passengers with a ship on the other end of the Gorge, turn around and head back to the port where they started, allowing the swapped passengers to complete their itinerary.

In this heat ask for a Radler. Beer with lemon soda - sometimes other fruit soda - but usually not overly fruity or sweet. It's more refreshing than regular beer in the heat and is barely half the ABV. No problem drinking three Maß at a beerfest unlike with the regular Festbier. (But still don't drive)

Kind of related to the the plimsoll line, I think. Those marks just show the current static draught of the ship. The plimsoll line marker would show the maximum draught to operate a ship safely - like if you loaded too much gravel on a bulk carrier and did not leave a safe margin of freeboard. This ship has normal draught of 1.5 meters according to Vesselfinder. I doubt if they would ballast it down much more than 50 cm so I guess if the black paint, the top of which is at about 2 meters, is not showing one might suspect something is amiss, like the boat is overloaded or taking on water - that would serve the function of a ersatz plimsoll line. @Notameraid, please add to this or correct me if I am way off. RDVIK

Where will passengers be picked up by their bus? Bacharach, Bingen/Rüdesheim? Mainz/Wiesbaden, Worms, Speyer - even Mannheim/Ludwigshafen would be shorter bus rides from the St. Goarhausen excursion boat. Between them there should be enough docks. How about turning basins, though? Anyway the Speyer or Heidelberg shore excursions on Viking Getaway's day 5 should still be doable even from Strasbourg.

notamermaid, Thank you! You said the magic word: "Abladetiefe". Searching with this term leads to several relevant sites. It is much clearer in German. A better English translation would have been "loaded draught" or something similar. Where have we seen this chart before? Same website - different language. http://www.platformzeroincidents.nl/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Berechnung-nautische-Tiefe-R0.pdf Abladetiefe seems to be a much more useful concept for freight carrying riverships/barges. They would calculate it to determine how big of a load they can carry, especially of a bulk cargo. Cruise ships don't have such variable loads. RDVIK Edited to add an additional important term: The Abladetiefe is the "static load" (in Ruhelage). Then they have to figure the "Absunk" or the measurement of how much the motion of the ship will cause it sink or kind of squat down in the water as it is underway (fahrdynamisches Einsinken). Wow! so much to have to consider it's a wonder more boats don't run aground.

notamermaid, Yes, I have seen that page. I have been trying to figure out why they used the term "Discharging depth" in the text and on the chart, but Navigational depth in the title. "Discharging" anywhere else is a hydrological term of water volume given in cubic meters per second. Maybe just an odd translation into English from a Dutch website of terms from a chart which appears to have originally been in German. I got the formula I used from this page: (You have to click on the plus sign in the box titled So berechnen Kapitäne die wirkliche Wassertiefe" to see the formula) https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/rheinland-pfalz/was-ist-ein-pegel-erklaerung-100.html RDVIK

notamermaid, Thank you for finding that info. 1.6 meters must be a ship as delivered by the Werft. Anywhere else they're giving 1.8 to 2.0m. Binnenschifferforum has been starting a thread for each ship as they are introduced and in most cases they list the Tiefgang (draught) as 2,00 m. Sometimes they at "max", on one ship I checked, Tialfi, they did use 1,60. I guess the standard way to report draught is to give the maximum draught which at the same time corresponds to the minimum air draught (Fixpunkt) to clear low overpasses/bridges. Once you get crew, passengers, food load-out, etc., on board you probably can't trim the boat any more shallow than about 1.8 meters. I found a couple of photos of Viking Hlin out of the water where the forward and aft draught marks were clearly visible. The 2 meter mark approximately matches that red bumper line just above the black anti-fouling paint on the lower hull. Any photos of Longships underway don't seem to show more than about 20 centimeters of black paint exposed so they must be cruising at about 1.8 to 1.9 meters of draught. This may not be interesting to anyone else, but as long as I spent the time obsessing about it, I just thought I would share my thoughts. RDVIK