St Petersburg port cancelled!

[salboz]

Am going on the Vision next June primarily because of the 3 days in St. P. Also want to go to Moscow for a day. Anyone been before that can make suggestion as to how to best do this? Any recommendations for guides? Thinking of going to Moscow on the 2nd day.

[kaisatsu]

Am going on the Vision next June primarily because of the 3 days in St. P. Also want to go to Moscow for a day. Anyone been before that can make suggestion as to how to best do this? Any recommendations for guides? Thinking of going to Moscow on the 2nd day.

 

You might get more feedback if you start a new thread to ask about this. Terry has done it and replied to a similar thread a while ago:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1636961

And there has been discussion of Celebrity's excursion to Moscow. There might be others.

[MMDown Under]

I understand your huge disappointment at missing St Petersburg, as this port is the definite highlight of a Baltics cruise.

 

In all my research prior to our Baltics cruise in July, I hadn't come across any other ship missing St Petersburg.

 

I wonder if "Vision of the Seas" size was a contributing factor?

 

If you decide to do another cruise, try a smaller ship and stay for two nights at least.

 

Another possibility I considered is taking the ferry to St Petersburg from Kelsinki, Finland.

[John Bull]

The "bottleneck" is the Navigation Pass S-1 of The Saint Petersburg Dam

that allows ships to pass through the dam. There is a submersible caisson

(gate) that can be closed to prevent storm surge from the larger Gulf of

Finland into the smaller Neva River. These storm tides have caused hundreds of floods in St. Petersburg. The gate was first used sucessfully

on Nov.27,2011. Perhaps the gate was closed , preventing entry of the

cruise ship while protecting the city from the storm.

 

Aha, a flood-prevention dam / breakwater, rather than a bridge - as a closer look at GoogleEarth shows. Very very vaguely like the Thames Barrier, downstream fron London.

Thanks for the background/history, yes it all makes sense.

 

But I doubt the cancellation was due to the raising of the flood- barrier - that would've removed any doubt whether the captain was over-cautious.

 

JB :)