Cozumel Anchor Ahoy

Today (Nov 15) is the second day the port is re-opened to cruise ship,
requiring all ships to be anchored or moored because all the cruise
ship
piers had been severely damaged by hurricane Wilma.

Four cruise ships are in Cozumel today, and tomorrow -- the most this
week, with only one ship scheduled to come in on Thursday, Friday, and
Saturday, according the Festival annoucement on Nov 11:

http://www.cometocozumel.com/english/wilma/default.asp

The Star Princess anchored at approximately 7:15 am (local), and
passengers are being tendered to shore by boats I've not see in Cozumel
before -- several identical blue-and-yellow ferry size boats, with
capacity
of 400-500 passengers (according to the Princess patter briefing)
instead
of the much smaller tenders of the cruise ship.

These must be ferry boats brought from Cancun, for the tendering tasks
this week. Even with those large special tenders, the transfer of
2,600
passengers to shore is expected to take 2-3 hours.

The Star Princess is anchored at a distance of between 1/2 and 3/4
miles
from shore -- a surprisingly long distance away, possibly as a special
rule for the week that anchoring must be outside the boundry of the
marine part, It's directly off the shore of the Puerta Maya Pier where
the
ship would have docked had the pier not been destroyed by Wilma.

For those divers who are concerned with the anchoring cruise ships
damaging the reefs of Cozumel dive sites, I can say positively and
unequivocally (based on my well over 1,200 dives in Cozumel) that there
is NO WAY in Hell (ooops, that's in the next stop at Grand Cayman) that
the anchoring at that distance from shore in the channel that it could
damage any coral (if there's any at that distance and depth) that is
ever
seen by any diver in Cozumel, nor could it possibly make any difference
to the reefs south of the Puerta Maya pier.

So, that's good news. Reefs and diving will not be adversely affected
in
any way by the presence of the cruise ships, provided the DIVE SHIOPS
themselves have sufficiently recovered (or survived) from hurricane
Wilma's physical and economical impact.

This is the first time in 18 years that we are in Cozumel WITHOUT our
dive gears, because it didn't appear that Cozumel could handle the
cruise ship traffic by yesterday, when we left home 10 days ago. We
had already written off Grand Cayman as a port to dive since we had
already done all the sites that are worth diving there (within striking

distance of the cruise ship) and we were already sick of diving
Stingray
City (having done it more than a dozen times, and sat out the last
two).
None of the other ports of call is worth the trouble of getting wet.
:-)

So, we are not in any hurry to get into the long line of passengers to
scramble ashore, and plan to go as soon as the crowd clears, two to
three hours from how, and still have all afternoon to re-visit the
town,
for the third time this year.

-- Bob.