notamermaid

So I have tried and succeeded to track a ship. A bit complicated but it worked out. One could of course just what till the ship turns up again on the radar, I tried a different way to find it faster. Here is the start (vesselfinder), the Viking Hermod at Leutesdorf, signal lost 18 hours ago: The Viking Hermod shows up on the Koblenz port signalling list early this morning on marinetraffic. Now she is at Rüdesheim, where she only signals via satellite on marinetraffic, but she appears as docked in the Rüdesheim vessel list: Her data file page says right now: "Where is this vessel going to? The vessel is currently at port RUDESHEIM, DE after a voyage of 5 hours, 43 minutes originating from port BRAUBACH, DE." So she sailed at a reasonable speed in reasonable time through the Rhine Gorge and should appear with a terrestrial signal again close to Mainz. notamermaid

A bit of news from TUI. The 2023 winter itineraries: https://travelweekly.co.uk/news/travel-agents/tui-river-cruises-unveils-packages-for-2023 notamermaid

I have been talking quite a bit about the depth of the navigation channel but this year have not posted this in context yet, i.e. a graph or a table, I have cut out a section of the graphics, here it is: Down at the bottom, the thick black line shows you the kilometres of the Rhine as you sail downstream, together with important towns that mark the sections. From Iffezheim the river is free flowing (freier Abfluss). The blue shade shows you the depth of the navigation channel, not the river. See on the left that there is much more blue where the river is under influence of the lock. Then the depth reduces to 2.10m than to 1.90m from kilometre 508 to kilometre 557. Kaub lies in that section at kilometre 546.2. From 592 (figure not visible here), that is Koblenz, the depth is 2.50m. I will leave out the downstream sections. Now, important to note is that the reference point is the GlW (gleichwertiger Wasserstand). Now the problem in the Rhine Gorge becomes clearer: the GlW line at Kaub is 78cm. What have we at Kaub today? As I write, now at 17:30 hours, 78cm! Depth of navigation channel now? 1.90m! Very tight when you consider the draft of the ship and the clearance you need under the hull, etc. Too tight perhaps for one, close for another, fine for another. That's it from me with the basics, the more complicated stuff and mathematics is for the captains. The website with link to the full image: https://www.wsa-rhein.wsv.de/Webs/WSA/Rhein/DE/Wasserstrassen/Fahrrinne/Fahrrinne_node.html notamermaid

I hope the itinerary goes as planned from here, on the swapped ship, and you can enjoy a beautiful evening in Koblenz. notamermaid

No need to apologize. We obviously had the same thought. I mean, what is that incline?! Looks steeper than the road up to Marksburg castle . I hope we will hear from more river cruisers on the rivers now, would be good to know if the company can do justice to the original itinerary on the Rhine. The Rhine Gorge is not to be missed! notamermaid

Regensburg gauge has seen a nice rise but appears to have peaked now. Pfelling gauge has risen to 228cm and we will see the peak probably late in the evening. What that will be we cannot know but the authorities' website suggests 233cm. By tomorrow all the levels of the navigable Bavarian Danube will be on a downward trend again and I am afraid the forecast suggests 220cm at Pfelling. Which could be the new recorded lowest. But I have a suspicion that it may not stop there. notamermaid

Update: the level at Maxau peaked during the night, the peak is just going past Kaub which is at 81cm. During the afternoon we can expect the peak to have gone through Koblenz and the wave from the Moselle will go through its confluence to reach the Rhine soon. If it does not rain we will see levels going down a bit again probably, with only the Lower Rhine profiting from this wave still. We need more rain around Lake Constance, in the East of the Vosges mountains and in the Black Forest for the Rhine to sustain a level that is high enough for large river cruise ships. Prediction suggests 74cm on Monday morning. notamermaid

I just say one thing: "Alter!" A modern German expression of astonishment. The first photo for me is "yes, that is very low, hardly ever see this close up" but the second is just so amazingly unusual. It should be in all brochures and on websites to explain what low water is about (the first one works too for that). And - do no get me wrong - is the perfect eye-opener for those who think they can get onto a river cruise ship in a wheelchair and not be a burden for the crew. notamermaid

True. 225cm was the update to the day before when it was even lower. I wonder what they will log in as the new low at the end of the year. Could be 223, 224, 225 or 226. Still cannot believe the Elbe is doing much better this Summer in comparison, quite unusual. notamermaid

lore23 has posted in the Rhine thread about their upcoming ship swap on the Rhine. My goodness. I hope you are employing sarcasm. But seriously, I have heard of major problems, suitcases appear to be arriving all over the place or not at all. Had a friend over from US last week and their suitcase did not arrive at Düsseldorf where it was supposed to. Hope your holiday is as best as it possibly can be under the current circumstances. notamermaid

Now that you say it... I had not noticed before but it is also the Hild that sails the Basel to Trier itinerary, the Hlin is given as only deployed on the Rhine Getaway. I am a little confused. @loge23, sorry to read that. I hope they take you to Koblenz via the Rhine Gorge. I am a bit surprised about this long stretch Speyer to Koblenz. I would have thought they go to Mainz but I suppose playing it safe and having a boat ready at Koblenz is the way to go. If you have a spare minute please tell us what happens at Koblenz. It would be nice to know if an excursion boat takes you to see castles in the Rhine Gorge. Have a great time nevertheless. That looks better. Kaub has risen to 78cm. A further rise at Maxau may translate into a few extra centimetres at Kaub during the evening. Fingers crossed. notamermaid

Definitely better than Viking, but I know they have done ship swaps on the Danube in past years in low water, as reported by cruisers. The river is currently so low in Bavaria that I imagine Scenic to struggle as much as Viking. But details we would need to get up to date from passengers. So where are we with the river levels? Regensburg going up, just daily fluctuation or reaction to rain? Not sure yet. Pfelling still very low at 225cm. notamermaid

Thanks for that idea. Have you checked the roll calls if someone has posted recently (of course we should not pull anyone into the open here, no names!). I believe you are due to leave soon for the Grand European? I see the Viking ships and others sailing on the river live, but yesterday I noticed a ship at an odd time in the wrong place (on the Rhine). Perhaps held up at a lock or simply slowed down. Hopefully someone is happy to post with some info from their respective ship. notamermaid

I have been wondering why the Sena stays downstream from Cologne. Cologne is her home port and due to her width she cannot navigate any locks on the Rhine, but the width itself does not prevent sailing up to Koblenz for example. Double-width container barges sail on the river. Up to Iffezheim it cannot be the limit of the locks so I have been thinking that she has no permit to sail in the Rhine Gorge perhaps. I would be happy to find out about this. Perhaps some time in the future I will ask Arosa about it. The interesting thing is that most ships used to have a shallower draft as they were not that long. In the 1990's hardly any ships were bigger than 110m. Over the years more and more ships got standardized at 110m and gradually apart from the odd 125m, etc. sizes already sailing (which will have a similar draft to the large ships), 135m river cruise ships appeared. Now the better half of the fleet is 135m in size. Basically more ships that can get stuck and more (mostly) Americans on those ships noticing the problem and more interest on CC and well, this leading to me starting a thread around that issue a few years ago. Now a firmly established annual renewal... We will be talking about this issue till the dredgers have left the Bavarian Danube and the concrete mixers have left the building sites along the embankments in several years from now. The low water issues have been mentioned more and more in German news also due to the growing interest in river cruising over the past ten years or so, but with different logistics, other cancellation policies, it has not become such a great issue as it is for those travelling a great distance to actually come to Germany and Europe. After all, if I had booked a river cruise on the Danube and the ship was not sailing, I would not find it that much of a problem. For me Passau is only roughly seven hours away by train. Just notify me before I hope on the train. notamermaid

A bit surprising, but the radar did indicate that the Isar would not see as much rain as the Lech. It is hot again here, but the rain of about two hours (mostly drizzle) brought nice relief for nature albeit short and has made breakfast just a tiny bit more pleasant for me, it had actually cooled down over night enough to be able to air the flat a little. Geography lesson for folks further away: the Isar river drains into the Danube near Deggendorf, this means the water does not help the river level at Pfelling, but helps at Vilshofen upstream from Passau already. Interesting. From the little I have heard and read I have assumed that things on the Mississippi - let us say - went quite wrong for Viking. To be fair on them, they tried hard on the Elbe. While the two Elbe ships are "baby longships" they are nevertheless of a different design as regards using outfitting material, by that I mean anything beyond the pure steel, and a propelling jet system. It means according to Viking that the ships are lighter and better equipped for the Elbe. They are a little better than the previous ships they used, the Clara Schumann and the Theodor Fontane. Unfortunately, the Elbe river did what it is good at: being unreliable. CroisiEurope must have looked at the river and decided to use the tried and tested method of the paddle wheeler, a tradition on the Elbe for 150 years plus. But, a big but, even CroisiEurope have found sailing in Summer to be too unreliable in the stretch around Dresden, so they have skipped doing that. Cruelly, economically speaking, this year it turns out that the Elbe is easier to sail than the Danube in Bavaria. I much admire CroisiEurope for being steadfast with their policy of sticking with the 110m ships and not "upgrading" to 135m (they have several ones that are smaller than 110m). This may limit them as per choices in outfitting but does not limit them sailing in low water (hardly, anyway). notamermaid

You are not alone, believe me, many, many Germans have never heard of it. Tours to the island have been organized for about 12 years now. It is not purely natural, i.e. it is contained by a kind of drilling they did something like a hundred years ago. But the pressure has always been in the ground there, I mean the carbon dioxide, they just funneled it to become the high spouting water it is today. It is fueled by the volcanic activity in the area. The valley nearby is famous for mineral water and companies that supply co2 on an industrial scale. To my shame I have never got round to organizing a trip there (you need to book a boat time slot), just stood opposite at Leutesdorf. For the enthusiastic river cruisers who have got lots of spare time in Koblenz: you can take a train to Andernach from Koblenz-Stadtmitte (takes about 9 to 12 minutes I believe), walk to the information centre at the river bank, see the exhibition there and book the connected boat trip (you may want to check all this beforehand). You will need a full afternoon to do this round trip Koblenz-Andernach-geyser-Andernach-Koblenz. The website: https://www.geysir-andernach.de/en/ notamermaid

Must get back to the subject of ship sizes and locks but for now, just a look at the most important question for today (if you want to sail the river conveniently without muscle power): how has the Danube in Bavaria reacted to the nice bit of rain in the last 18 hours? To be honest, I expected a little more, but I think I am impatient. We need to wait till the Upper Danube waters have reached Regensburg and the Lech has drained into the Danube. Perhaps the evening will tell us more. Right now, the graph at Pfelling is not looking good, get ready....... 224cm!! If this becomes official (or the slightly lower figure this morning) it will replace the old low record of 228cm from 2018. As regards the river levels in Austria, I found an article published on Monday in Salzburg. It says that the levels of the Danube are low, but they do not adversely affect either barges or river cruise ships yet. So as of Monday the limited shallows in Austria were not a problem yet I assume (remember Austria has got a few locks that help to some extent). Apparently three tributaries in Austria are still feeding the Danube enough. Hopefully this is continuing. It would mean that logistics are not too troublesome, i.e. the stretch that needs to be covered is only Regensburg (or Straubing) to Vilshofen (or Passau). Your company may of course decide to extend that for reasons of docking space available or other logistical and navigational reasons that I cannot be aware of. notamermaid

Unfortunately, the terrestrial signals are poor in the area. All ships used to be clearly trackable up to Braubach in the Rhine Gorge making Koblenz a great place for spotting ships. For several months now the signal pick up has stopped around Leutesdorf and only works again from after Rüdesheim (the latter having been the last port upstream where there is no clear signal as long as I have been tracking ships, which is several years). Much further upstream there is another section where tracing the signals is very limited. Leutesdorf, by the way, is a very pleasant wine village with a landing stage only suitable for excursion boats, or possibly very small river cruise ships: The boat in the distance is the "MS Namedy", docking at the peninsula "Namedyer Werth". The boat takes visitors to the nature reserve to watch the spectacle of the highest cold water geyser in the world. There has been a pleasant uptick in the river level at Maxau, but we see possibly only a minimal effect yet at Kaub that may be attributed to the rain yesterday. Kaub is up from the lowest reading this year so far, which was yesterday 67cm, to 71cm now. Perhaps we will see a couple more centimetres added by this evening. While I have been writing the level at Cologne has gone up a crucial centimetre to put the green dot back on the gauge map of Germany, meaning out of the statistical low. I have not mentioned Cologne for a while so here is some info. Cologne has a deep navigation channel, i.e. substantially deeper than the Rhine Gorge. However there are shallows and ships are notorious for redistributing gravel with the propellers, especially when they turn. A tricky bit there, but a bit more impractical for river cruise ships is the fact that at Cologne as elsewhere landing stages can be out of the deepest part of the navigation channel. This could result in a large river cruise ship not docking in its usual spot so as not to risk scraping the bottom, seeing that often there is not only gravel but also rocks securing the embankment. notamermaid

I would tend to agree. Not convinced yet that the rain of this afternoon will bring much lasting relief. On the Rhine, the few extra centimetres could do the trick to avoid ship swaps for now, on the Danube many more centimetres are needed to bet back to a decent level. I have hopes for the Lech carrying a decent amount of water again as it has rained in the area quite a bit, but will it be enough to help the Danube with more than just a couple of centimetres? Question is also if the heavy rain this evening will mostly go to the Neckar catchment area or to the upper reaches of the young Danube (West of Ulm). We will know more tomorrow morning. And I will be back to report around lunchtime. notamermaid

Indeed, that is the idea. It has worked recently for @StartrainDD on their Viking ship. The last Viking ship to be able to use that option before Pfelling gauge fell too low. The next logistical stage is ship swaps. Or cancellations. By the way, Viking is known for not cancelling cruises. They have a policy of providing the experience of the ports with ship swaps and if that is not possible with coach trips. Something to be aware of when booking. Definitely always read the terms and conditions of any river cruise line before you book. notamermaid

We have had rain coming into the country from the Southwest and West. Showers and localized thunderstorms are coming down in the Upper Danube valley and around the Neckar river mostly and on a lesser scale in hilly regions west of the Rhine and also along the Lower Rhine valley. It will more feed the Danube than the Rhine, also due to the showers East of Lake Constance. The Moselle is being feed by the showers in France (see bottom left of the map) but that does not help in Rhine Gorge. It will be interesting to see how this further develops during the afternoon and evening. notamermaid

Expanding on the post of 30 April, here is another UK article on the Amadeus Riva (I had missed it in June): https://travelweekly.co.uk/news/tourism/new-ship-and-itinerary-added-by-amadeus-river-cruises-for-2023 There is an early booking discount, not just for the Riva. The new itinerary on the Moselle and its tributary the Saar is this one: https://www.amadeus-rivercruises.com/river-cruises/cruise/show/malerische-mosel-saar-2023.html Which is actually not on the Riva but the Brilliant. notamermaid

Here is one report: https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/nachgebaute-roemische-galeeren-erreichen-regensburg,TBwq5t3 With short video: https://www.mittelbayerische.de/region/regensburg-stadt-nachrichten/roemerschiffe-in-regensburg-ueber-passau-gehts-bis-nach-rumaenien-21179-art2139194.html notamermaid

You can see the river being low at Koblenz and it perhaps it explains what I mean with the excursion boats skipping docking. The landing stages reach out far into the water but the boats often need to leave the navigation channel to get there and need to manoeuvre there. With the river so low they can reach but are closer to the river bed, the gravel and sometimes the rocks at the river embankment. See the embankment, also behind the Viking river cruise ship: The image is a bit small, here is the webcam: https://www.feratel.com/en/webcams/germany/koblenz.html notamermaid

The low water area now extends, which is slightly worrying, further up the Rhine having reached Mainz and Worms and I dare say not looking too good right up to Maxau. Those three towns have deeper navigation channels than the Kaub area but the river is now so low that I expect river cruise ships to be slowed down there. Mainz is close to the "GlW", Worms and Maxau are under. This is the figure down from which the desired depth of the navigation channel is not maintained. In essence: more shallows, more bumps, less space for ships passing each other. This does not mean ships cannot sail, it means navigation is more difficult, etc. Basically what I have explained in a previous post about Kaub. It was definitely hot yesterday. Highest temperature recorded in Rhineland-Palatinate yesterday was 39.1 Celsius in Koblenz. My flat heated up to 30 Celsius yesterday. It was still 28.5 Celsius in the living room when I got up. Excursion boats in the Rhine Gorge now skip ports' landing stages as it is too dangerous to try and dock there. Kaub gauge is at 68cm, 10 cm below the GlW line: Rain is forecast, the big question is whether that will help the river. Forecast suggest we will see an effect at Kaub and gives 73cm on Friday. Not a lot but we are grateful for every centimetre. Looking towards the end of the month, a recovery to 100cm is ruled out, but the probability still suggests 90cm as possible. Something with an IMO emotionally cruel twist has happened. Just over one year ago the Ahr valley was a disaster area due to flooding, now the small Ahr river is so low that it dries up before it reaches the Rhine at its mouth (the Ahr has a natural meander there, i.e. is not canalized). It just kind of disappears in the gravel beds. https://www.imago-images.com/st/0163072239 notamermaid