Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

The largest cruise ship ever to call on Haines came to town Tuesday, diverted from Skagway where a June 23 rockslide damaged the main cruise ship dock.

Several ships altered itineraries following the slide, including a smaller one that docked in Haines on Sunday. More cruise ships could shift plans if Skagway's railroad dock stays closed.

At 1,083 feet in length, Tuesday's ship, the Princess Cruises' Majestic Princess, is about 100 feet longer than the Serenade of the Seas, the second-largest cruise vessel to call on Haines this summer.

The ship's max capacity is 3,560 passengers, but it was carrying around 2,200 guests, Haines Borough tourism director Steven Auch said.

"The Serenade of the Seas has already been in port this summer with that same volume of guests, so while the ship itself is quite a bit larger, we expect town to be as busy as it has been on the busiest days of the year so far," Auch said in a Monday email to the CVN.

Operated by White Pass & Yukon Route Railroad, the damaged dock in Skagway normally can fit two large cruise ships, and does so about five or six times per week during the summer, but after the slide it could accommodate only one vessel.

The dock was still undergoing technical evaluation and remained closed to vehicles and pedestrians as of Tuesday, after rocks from the steep hillside had crashed into the concrete deck.

Some ships scheduled to use the dock anchored offshore instead and tendered passengers to Skagway's harbor.

A ship likely would reroute to a different port only if it were scheduled in Skagway on a day when the other docks and anchorage already were full, Auch said.

Looking ahead, he said the biggest ships displaced from Skagway would be more likely to sail to Icy Strait Point, which has a longer pier, than Haines. The Icy Strait terminal is owned and operated by the Hoonah village corporation, Huna Totem Corp.

But he said as long as Skagway's railroad dock is closed, smaller ships might be more inclined to reroute to Haines. Silversea Cruises' Silver Shadow, which tied up Sunday in Haines instead of Skagway, had about 320 passengers on board.

One of the appeals of Haines as an alternate port for cruise lines is that passengers still can take the private fast ferry to Skagway and ride the White Pass train, a major attraction in the upper Lynn Canal, Auch said.

Skagway was forecasted to see about seven or eight times as many cruise passengers this year as Haines. In pre-pandemic years it would see more than 10 times as many.

Auch said pre-pandemic data surveys suggest the average cruise passenger spends $111 in any given Southeast Alaska port town.

By that metric, Princess Majestic's surprise docking would have generated $244,000 in local revenue. But Auch noted that "spending patterns are completely different now (post-pandemic), so I don't know if those numbers still hold up."

The borough renovated the Port Chilkoot cruise dock in 2014 for about $5 million.

As of Wednesday, the Silver Shadow was scheduled to return to Haines instead of Skagway on July 4, but no other future diversions to Haines had been announced.