Rhine water levels 2017 and similar topics

Carried original passport. In these days of security concern a passport copy might raise suspicion. When crossing borders you are potentially subject to an immigration check just like at an airport. Would a copy be sufficient for an airport?

Carried original passport. In these days of security concern a passport copy might raise suspicion. When crossing borders you are potentially subject to an immigration check just like at an airport. Would a copy be sufficient for an airport?

Nope, definitely not!

steamboats

Here is a little tip for repeat cruisers or those that might do some more active than what is usually offered (i.e. a guided tour of the town, etc):

Rüdesheim is a touristy place loved by many, many and can be a little crowded. acwmom has recently returned from a cruise with Uniworld and went with the active tour (from post #109): http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2479562&page=6

Assmannshausen is a little quieter than Rüdesheim, viewed as a bit more sophisticated and expensive. The village (part of Rüdesheim administration) is famous for its red wine. You do not need to hike over the hills, through the valley it takes a good hour (but can be noisy along the busy road). It is one stop on the train, or you can get a circuit ticket with a regional boat company for example: http://www.bingen-ruedesheimer.de/linienfahrten/ringticket/?lang=en

The water level has risen but is still fine. As it had been quite low it is now at a good level. Should stay that way unless it rains a lot for another two days.

If you encounter any problems with low bridges I would be happy (well, not quite, but you know what I mean) if it could be posted, as I am too far away from the area where this might occur. Thank you.

notamermaid

Sailing on the Amadeus Silver III from Amsterdam to Munich departing next Wednesday, May 10th. Given your current weather forecast do you anticipate we'll have any water level issues on this route?

Hello EE 26,

For the Waal and the Rhine it looks fine, the Main had been a little low but I cannot say if any river cruises had been affected. As there is some rain forecast I guess sailing should be fine there as well. The Main Danube Canal has low bridges that would only be a problem during flooding which looks unlikely. I can only give very tentative info here. The Danube had caused a problem where there are low bridges a few days ago. Seeing that the Danube is on the other side of the European watershed and more rain is forecast in that area than in the Rhine valley that problem might arise again. Again very tentative. River levels are o.k. at the moment in general but there can be isolated events that do not make it into the news nationwide so I do not read about them.

It is getting generally warmer but the weather is unsettled. Night frost can happen still and rain is forecast but not every day for the next week. More a case of "isolated showers". Often cloudy.

By the way, as Munich is not on the Danube and is likely to be your post-cruise stay I cannot say if any events on the Danube will effect you at all as you have not indicated where your river cruise will end.

Have a great time on the Amadeus Silver III.

notamermaid

Thank you for the reply. Our cruise ends in Nuremberg.

Going astray a little to the Danube region near Würzburg - we have no thread on the Danube - here is an article on an unlikely tourist attraction (or just a quirky fact depending on your point of view) coming up. When Britain leaves the EU the centre will shift to a tiny village in Bavaria: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/germany/bavaria/articles/the-tiny-german-village-that-will-soon-be-the-centre-of-the-eu-u/

Back to the Rhine: things are looking good here, but the weather is unsettled there will be no significant change to that over the next few days. And yet another landing stage is being built I found out today, it is at Monheim North of Cologne. It has been planned to accommodate 135m ships but will not be marketed to the river cruising industry (yet).

notamermaid

The Viking website just listed the following:

DANUBE RIVER

Due to high water levels on the Danube River, the following itineraries will be affected:

• May 14th Romantic Danube aboard Viking Atla – Guests will now embark sister ship Viking Jarl and swap mid-cruise back to Viking Atla
  
• May 14th Romantic Danube aboard Viking Jarl – Guests will now embark sister ship Viking Atla and swap mid-cruise back to Viking Jarl
  

So is this going to effect other ships too?

Norm

Hello nreeder,

this is unusual as the official gauging stations do not report flooding, I think it must be an "isolated" short stretch of river. From past cruisers' experiences one can say that Viking has such problems first in general, due to the deep draft of their longships. The advantage for them is that they have so many ships running that they can swap the passengers from one ship to another avoiding that tricky stretch. Other 135m ships could be affected but I have not heard anything significant on the news.

Perhaps steamboats might answer with some more info as she lives in Bavaria.

notamermaid

The report states 'high water' so it shouldn't been the deep draft of the longships, but rather the high superstructure. Viking seems to have gotten it wrong on both ends...

Oh dear, yes, thanks jazzbeau. Wrong writing completely by me. Must have been too tired (wrote the post late in the evening Central European Time). It will be one or more high bridges somewhere on a stretch of river, that's what I meant, came out completely wrong. :o

That could of course affect more ships but I have not heard anything on the news.

It is difficult to find much information on the height of ships, it is not regularly given in the ship details, I found one for an Arosa ship: 6.50m. The Viking ships will be of similar height. You might find some info, I just have not looked around that much. The latest 135m ships appear to built with "minimal allowance" in height when sailing the Main Danube canal, i.e. bridges are particularly dangerous spots. This is what I have read from roaming around German internet sites last year. It has become standard procedure for some companies to go as wide, long and high as possible. Guess why ships are sailing with 135m hulls not 136 metres? Exactly, 135m is the maximum length on the Danube, Rhine, Main, Moselle, etc. allowed for passenger ship (by the relevant boards/authorities).

CroisiEurope is one stand-out exception, they have no 135m ships on those rivers above.

Again, sorry for that wrong thought.

notamermaid

It is difficult to find much information on the height of ships, it is not regularly given in the ship details, I found one for an Arosa ship: 6.50m.

 

notamermaid

I was able to find the height for several ships on the site of the Breejen shipyard where several of the Avalon, Emerald, and Scenic ships were built. They all seem to have an "air draft" of 6.0 meters.

On our recent Rhone cruise our captain told us that before sailing up the river from Lyon he filled the ballast tanks, had the drinking water tanks topped off, and finally took on a full tank of diesel fuel in order to make the ship ride as low as he could. The morning after we sailed under the critical low bridge, I asked him how much clearance we had. The answer was 5 cm--2 inches for those who like English measurements!

http://www.breejen-shipyard.nl/en/3534-river-cruise-vessel-avalon-poetry-ii

Thank you FuelScience,

I had forgotten that the Breejen shipyard gives such details. The Neptun Werft in Rostock that builds the Viking and Arosa ships only gives length and width for measurements and the draft.

notamermaid

Forgot to mention that Viking's "Romantic Danube" route is Budapest to Nuremburg or vice versa. So their concern is somewhere along that stretch. They don't mention where the passengers will trade ships.

We will be on Viking Ve from Budapest to Amsterdam, June 2. We leave for Europe, Monday to see Munich, Salzburg and Vienna before getting to Budapest. We've seen the weather reports for the next 10 days which seem to indicate on and off rain and thunderstorms which I believe is normal "Spring" weather.

We're prepared for all of the above. We've read enough reviews to know that ship trades happen whenever the river is either too high, or too low. Can't control Mother Nature!

Norm

I was reading some of the River Cruise threads and came across this which may indicate where the high water issue is:

"Hello from Passau - we're currently on-board the Avalon Expression on our way from Prague to Budapest on the Legends of the Danube cruise 4/29-5/2. We started in Prague and did a one day pre-cruise extension and had 4 great days in Prague. The water on the Danube is high - so Avalon held the boat in Deggendorf due to a low bridge between Deggendorf and Nuremberg"

So I'm assuming that Viking may be having problems in the same area.

Norm

Thank you nreeder,

that certainly shows that other boats are affected, unfortunately also the 110m boats as the height is similar (who wants a low ceiling in their cabin?) to the 135m boats. Maximum headroom is a tricky and dangerous business. My train was halted near a railway line bridge in England once with the announcement "a lorry has hit the bridge, we need to wait and see if the the bridge is safe to go over". Not a nice thought. Always better to be safe than sorry in such situations.

The stretch from Nuremberg to Deggendorf by river is (my rough guess) 250km. But nevertheless that is narrowed down enough for me to say that it could be any of a dozen bridges on the Danube, but it could well be a bridge on the Canal still rather than on the Danube. The Canal is from Nuremberg to Kelheim.

I will start a thread for the Danube, I think this will be better for any upcoming questions. Hoping that past and present cruisers tell us of their experiences.

notamermaid

Notamermaid -

Someone just posted this in the "Favorite River Cruise Itinerary" thread referring to an Amsterdam to Basel sailing on the RHINE.

"We had the requisite safety briefing and the Captain explained that if we should be going down, all we needed to do was jump off the ship and walk to shore as the river is not very deep."

Is the Rhine really that shallow? I thought that in spots it is deep and dangerous - especially the gorge stretch.

I was told this once in a safety briefing on the Elbe where in spots we barely cleared the river bottom. Then the captain told NOT to jump because the river was so shallow that we could break bones when landing.

I believed the Elbe comment - but I'm skeptical about the Rhine. Can you clarify. Thanks

Notamermaid -

 

Someone just posted this in the "Favorite River Cruise Itinerary" thread referring to an Amsterdam to Basel sailing on the RHINE.

 

"We had the requisite safety briefing and the Captain explained that if we should be going down, all we needed to do was jump off the ship and walk to shore as the river is not very deep."

 

Is the Rhine really that shallow? I thought that in spots it is deep and dangerous - especially the gorge stretch.

 

I was told this once in a safety briefing on the Elbe where in spots we barely cleared the river bottom. Then the captain told NOT to jump because the river was so shallow that we could break bones when landing.

 

I believed the Elbe comment - but I'm skeptical about the Rhine. Can you clarify. Thanks

On our first river cruise (Budapest to Amsterdam) we were told that if the ship started to 'go down' just go up to the sun deck because the water wouldn't get that high before the ship rested on the bottom of the river.

xmaser,

that is interesting. I hope the captain was not totally in earnest, but he was not wrong. Ok, at certain points you can walk to shore if the ship sinks. It is just a little more complicated. There is a formula by which captains calculate the depth of the navigation channel, that is deeper than the Rhine around the river banks. The actual river depth in Germany varies a lot, in the Middle Rhine valley from for example 1.9m in the Rheingau area to the deepest spot at the Loreley with 17m (according to a German website). But in a low water situation you could certainly make it across walking it depends on where you are. Do not jump in though, you could hit a protruding rock! The deepest spot of the Rhine area as a whole appears to be the St. Anna Loch, it is a hole in a kind of ravine at the spot where Switzerland and Germany meet at the town Rheinfelden. It is 32m! River cruise ships do not go that far upstream.

In the case of an emergency I would go with capriccio's suggestion. Waiting on the sundeck seems perfect to wait for a boat. Ships are around 6m high and the navigation channel is not always that deep. You can see the minimums here for the different stretches of the Rhine: https://www.elwis.de/Service/Telematikanwendungen/Inland-ECDIS/Allgemeines/ARGO/fahrrinnensituation/ But some spots in or around the navigation channel are much deeper.

Unfortunately if the ship sinks during flooding even the sundeck could get close to the waterline, depends on the ship, the water level and where you sink in the navigation channel. But, here again, a complicated calculation as the basis for all of this is something called Gleichwertiger Wasserstand, a kind of base line mean water level.

UFF! I know this does not make it clearer, but clearer for me: I put a safety vest on and wait for the rescue guys on the sundeck.

notamermaid

There have been downpours and thunderstorms in Germany which have raised the water levels a little. But a heatwave is coming up! The whole of Germany will see rising temperatures over the next three days (including today that is). 29 degrees is forecast for the Cologne area (usually one of the warmest regions in Germany anyway). A bit much for May for me...

River levels are fine, just rising and falling a little with rainfall.

notamermaid

I was reading some of the River Cruise threads and came across this which may indicate where the high water issue is:

 

 

"Hello from Passau - we're currently on-board the Avalon Expression on our way from Prague to Budapest on the Legends of the Danube cruise 4/29-5/2. We started in Prague and did a one day pre-cruise extension and had 4 great days in Prague. The water on the Danube is high - so Avalon held the boat in Deggendorf due to a low bridge between Deggendorf and Nuremberg"

 

 

So I'm assuming that Viking may be having problems in the same area.

 

 

Norm

We were on a Viking cruise of the Danube in 2011 and the river was high around Passau. Viking gave everyone 2 choices: stay on the boat all day, or get off in Passau in the morning and spend the day in Passau (including a morning tour, a group lunch, and free afternoon). The boat was able to sail past all the high water with 200 less people aboard. They then bussed us from Passau about 45 minutes to the ships temporary docking position. No ship swaps were necessary for us.

Sounds like it is a great time to be on a river. My wife and I are heading to Amsterdam on Sunday to join the Uniworld River Princess on its journey to Budapest. Looking forward to a nice relaxing time.

Beyond the standard ports... part 6

A little upstream, at the confluence of the river Lahn with the Rhine is Lahnstein: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahnstein

Lahnstein has recently received a new landing stage at which the AmaKristina was christened on 10 May. According to the German press release of Lahnstein town council AmaWaterways co-financed this landing stage at Oberlahnstein (Lahnstein consists of Oberlahnstein and Niederlahnstein). For those interested in technical details and logistics here is the page of the company that manages the landing stage: http://www.lahnstein.de/fileadmin/data/Dokumente/Tourismus/2016_Anlegestelle_Hotelschiffe_englisch.pdf

What is there to see in Lahnstein? You can roam a bit round the tourism pages: http://www.lahnstein.de/en/tourismus/

The town is old and merits a nice afternoon stroll, especially to see the remaining parts of the old town wall. Burg Lahneck towering over the town is open to the public: http://www.burg-lahneck.de/index.html

Its close proximity to Koblenz - about 9km by car - makes it an ideal stop for river cruise ships when Koblenz has reached its capacity for the 135m ships.

notamermaid

We are enjoying very sunny weather here in the Rhine valley - great for father's day which is celebrated in Germany today. The temperatures will rise to 31 degrees on Sunday. In the Rhine valley, around Saarbrücken and even in Berlin. That means the river level is going done, there is not going to be any rain to speak of before Sunday evening or during the night when thunderstorms are likely to end the hot spell. No need to worry about sailing on the Rhine yet, there is enough water still.

Having enjoyed the afternoon on this public holiday (Ascension Day) lazing in the sun with the neighbour's cats I am back at the computer and here is a tip for you if you happen to stop in Mainz. The Generaldirektion (administrative body) for cultural heritage in Rhineland-Palatinate has just opened an exhibition called "vorZeiten - Archäologische Schätze an Rhein und Mosel". It is marketing talk for "we have found loads of old stuff in the Rhine and Moselle area over the last 200 odd years which we would like to show you some of this year". It is in connection with celebrating 70 years of founding of the state of Rheinland-Pfalz (a post-World War II construct, Germany needed a wee bit of re-organizing).

The website is only in German unfortunately: http://www.vorzeiten-ausstellung.de/

The fierce looking metal object the girl is smiling at is a Draco standard head used by Roman cohorts. It will be on display in the exhibition. Found on the site of a former Roman fort in Niederbieber near Neuwied it is the only one that has ever been excavated. All other "sightings" are depictions and reliefs.

The exhibition runs from 21 May to 29 October 2017.

notamermaid

It is hot! A warmer than average May Sunday means the neighbour's cat only moved from flower bed to patio at lunchtime. :D

It will continue to stay hot tomorrow, accuweather has a nice report on the current weather: http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/germany-sunday-monday-to-rival-warmest-days-so-far-this-year/70001758

The river level has not been impacted much yet.

notamermaid