Author Topic: Real life cruise...?  (Read 5283 times)

marc2140

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Real life cruise...?
« on: August 23, 2015, 03:16:24 PM »
Hi,
As Doug pointed out in his first post of the topic "pilotable shipping", the scenery from the ground in the RTMM area is real eye-candy.
I thought that a nice way to experience this, was to simulate one or more real cruises. The cruise operators have the knowledge; why not learn from that.
My first experiment is the 26 Glacier cruise, starting and ending in Whittier.
Look here for the real life web page:http://www.phillipscruises.com/route.htm. Make sure to have also a look at the vids and pictures page.
Some details:
1. The cruise is about 140 miles. That's a lot for a ship, but if you turn the simulation rate to 4x speed, you do no harm at what you see and you get the feeling that you are really on the move. If you move at 25 knots, it should take you about 1.5 hours to complete the cruise.
2. You need a decent boat with a good autopilot and reverse thrust to make maneuvring possible. This is still a weak point since we are only starting with our pilotable shipping section.
For this cruise I used a freeware huge french salvage boat; it has good speed, a sharp tracking auto pilot, but no functioning reverse thrust. So if you are really in deep trouble, you have to slew yourself out. This is still an experiment, you know....:http://simviation.com/1/browse-Misc-58-15.
3. You need to install our new autopilot gauge. You can find it at reply #100 in the topic "working on the boats". If you have a gauges problem, let me know. I'm sure our guys can come up with a mini-panel with default or freeware gauges. The autopilot gauge itself is freeware, that's for sure. On that #100 reply, you can also see the best view configuration to make cruises.
4. The sail plan is attached. It works nicely with the autopilot. So you can be both the captain and the tourist. I only had to intervene manually 3 or 4 times during the cruise: Getting out of Whittier may require some slewing. Some angles in the Esther passage are rather sharp. I'm pretty sure that in real life they will not navigate this with an autopilot either. And you have to help the ship also a bit when moving away from the mouth of some of the gletsjers. Improvements on the Sailplan are of course welcome; I'm just a beginner...
5. Plan G running in the background will be practical for both captain and tourist.
6. I made some pictures during the trip but not enough as I was watching the autopilot too much. But I'm sure you can take them for me, when you make the trip yourself.
Hope you enjoy this first real life cruise and look forward to your reactions.
Marcel

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jeff3163

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Re: Real life cruise...?
« Reply #1 on: September 12, 2015, 07:50:33 AM »
Hi Marcel,
     I traveled the Whittier to Whittier route you re-created.  It is a great cruise through the glaciers.  It was a couple of weeks ago.  Sorry I didn't get back here to share my experience.  I get side-tracked easily.   :P

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Doug

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Re: Real life cruise...?
« Reply #2 on: September 12, 2015, 10:28:33 AM »
Trying to get APP fixed up ... taking a lot of time. So haven't gotten to this cruise yet. Will be doing it soon. I have it saved and ready to go ... thank you Marcel.

Doug