We’ve got an abundant ship schedule today, so let’s see who’s on the river today, moving cargo, or waiting their turn.

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i got an interesting listener question, about the way that marine pilot’s board a ship using a pilot ladder. The answer illustrates how dangerous the job is, and how much pilots must rely on their own expertise and judgement, moment to moment, to safely do their jobs.

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Today we’ll talk about an interesting and unusual sight that happened on Sunday on the river: a big bluewater cruise ship was heading downriver and out to sea from Portland.

We’ll talk about why she was all the way upriver in Portland, since such ships generally stop in Astoria and go no further upriver except perhaps to anchor off the downtown waterfront while they are in town for the day.

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Today we’ll take a look at this week’s storm, which brought stormy conditions some places around the region, but missed others.

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Well, in typical Mother Nature fashion, she’s doing what she likes, and our predicted storm is a bit late. But arrive it will, and will likely make things messy for vessels out in it, and delay departures for ships that are in port here. We’ll talk today about what to expect, with the usual caveat, “subject to change.”

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We have some of our usual, messy fall weather coming in today, and I thought it would be a good time to review some of the weather jargon we start to see in our forecasts at this time of year, and what those words and numbers mean.

We’ll talk about ships on the bar in bad weather, and also what’s happening with other river bars along our PNW coast, where vessels may also be seeking refuge from the weather.

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Big changes happening as of this week, with regard to the show.

Beginning this week, the Ship Report will no longer air on KMUN on Fridays, but will air Monday-Thursday instead, and as a podcast on my website at shipreport.net.

KMUN will air the Ship Report twice a day on the radio, at 8:49 am and again at 5:49 pm, Monday through Thursday.

The changes come on the heels of big federal funding cuts to the station, which have resulted in their needing to make significant programming changes resulting from the loss of NPR programming.

I completely respect the necessity for change in this situation, and support KMUN’s efforts to regroup. I’m regrouping myself, and considering what’s next for me in terms of Friday podcasts. I’ll keep you posted as I sort it out.

In the meantime, as always, I’ll continue posting ship schedules on my website (shared on Facebook) and also marine weather on my Ship Report Facebook page.

Thanks for your understanding. More to come.

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We see many signs of fall in the Pacific Northwest, as cruise ships head south and one beloved ship, the icebreaker USCGC Polar Star, heads home to Seattle to prepare for another round of her annual mission: Operation Deep Freeze, where she breaks a navigable channel through pack ice to open McMurdo station to the world, which means access to supplies and fuel.

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A look at today’s ship traffic, and a change in the weather coming this weekend.

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The Columbia River is a busy water highway, with lots of vessels working, many of them upriver in places that folks near Astoria and even upriver in Portland and Vancouver, don’t see. Today we’ll talk about some of what happens as vessels do their work upriver.

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