notamermaid

Yes, the problems are more or less the same just not at the same time always and the Moselle is lock controlled in its entirety for river cruising whereas the Rhine is not. We have had years when there was flooding on the Moselle but the Vosges mountain range prevented the rain from causing flooding on the Upper and Middle Rhine. But that is again down to weather patterns so luck and not what one can plan. Yes, those are great itineraries on a smaller ship that has all the ease built into it, meaning small enough not to get into trouble easily and the cosiness that some people really appreciate. Sailing the Saar, Moselle, Rhine and Neckar is a good unusual route and the Swiss Ruby as I said is small enough to avoid problems in the Rhine Gorge. Bremen to Saarbrücken is the even weirder one but has so much history as it takes you from the flat North with all its red brick and low German dialect to the hilly French-leaning Saar people with their very different dialect. Only drawback is that all of that is in Germany. I am really happy that this itinerary is easily bookable on the Anglo-American market now. But, again, if one prefers the standard routes there are tons out there, like on the Seine, which rarely cause problems. One particular feature on the Main, which we have discussed elsewhere, is that the sundeck is mostly closed due to the low bridges and in flooding is a more pronounced problem than on the Rhine for example. Again, to avoid this chose a ship that has one deck fewer like some of CroisiEurope for example. Or indeed the Swiss Ruby. notamermaid

So on the Rhine we have Kaub with its famous gauge tower building, on the Danube we look at Pfelling which has - a hut. This is the hydrological information page on the history of extreme high or low water: https://undine.bafg.de/donau/pegel/donau_pegel_pfelling.html Note that the authorities prefer to measure and note the extremes by volume of water, which is apparently called discharge in English, rather than level. notamermaid

Level at Kaub at 1pm was 117cm. Adjusted forecast for tomorrow 1pm suggests 114cm. The 110cm has been pushed to Tuesday. It is sunny with the temperature having climbed above 20 Celsius. With the leaves slowly turning all shades of yellow, orange, red and brown will we get a "Golden October"? I would say it looks promising. Right, I am off to enjoy a bit of that sunshine. notamermaid

You are of course right. Seasonal problems can and inevitably will occur on any river, a bit of careful planning and a bit of luck will help to find a "best" one. You have left out the Moselle. Which made me think that the Moselle is quite a good river to choose. I always say to avoid the bottleneck Rhine Gorge. Which you do when sailing from Luxembourg/Remich to Amsterdam. At least for low water that is good, flooding can occur everywhere and is pot luck really - although one can plan to avoid it a bit. The Moselle has high modern bridges but the problem is more that the authorities ban river traffic in flooding. I will extend the question to which river and which ship. Then you can get close to 100 percent success rate in finding the cruise with virtually no problems. 110m with just two passenger decks on the large rivers (does not apply to the Douro and Elbe is a different case almost entirely) will almost completely ensure perfect sailing. The big thing to remember is that flooding is a short thing normally, low water can be a longer duration. Lock controlled rivers and canals like the system in Northern Germany or in the Netherlands are normally a safe bet as regards low water, for flooding this will depend on season, weather and other variables. I have read comments from people in the industry saying that 95 percent and more of river cruises run smoothly. When you think about the problems on the Danube right now and how many cruises are affected there must be tons of other rivers and canals with smooth sailing that help to get the statistics up that far. Although I am usually a bit sceptical of statistics. 😉 notamermaid

It may look like a plug that has been pulled like @Canal archive suggested or the giant snake that I suspect is doing things or, for the more mundane explanation, the authorities are doing something at the dams and locks - whoever has done something at Pfelling is not making any friends with river cruisers. The gauge reads 251cm now. That is the realm from which the river can struggle to recover meaning just a hint of rain is not enough. I am not too hopeful looking at the radar images. Happy to be proven wrong. With every centimetre less more large ships struggle of course and the level is already low enough to impact the shorter ships which tend to have a lower draft. notamermaid

Budapest with forecast: Other graph gives evening figure, i.e. now, as 119cm. Slow decline is expected. The margin of error makes for real unpredictability from the 4th. notamermaid

Certainly: https://www.meteox.de/forecastloop.aspx?type=1# Real time "now" data I like to look at here: https://www.wettergefahren.de/wetter/deutschland/aktuell/radarfilm.html notamermaid P.S.: German info more or less agrees with meteox

Welcome to Cruisecritic. Thank you for the link. Serbia is of course further out than Budapest but there is a high chance the weather will be similar there as with us West of the Balkans. Weather pattern has changed and the clouds are now drifting such that it will rain mostly in higher altitudes, focussing on the Alpine regions. Clouds still sweeping through on 3rd October though (4th October in Austria). However, rain does not look to be for long. Substantial in some parts but drizzle only in others. Will see how it goes. September recap coming up tomorrow or day after. notamermaid

Change in weather pattern it appears. Less rain now forecast than had been. Kaub gauge on the way down. 110cm expected for Monday. Tuesday less, bringing 100cm into view. Wednesday further decline, probably to under 100cm. Thursday strong indication for further fall. We will review again on Monday. notamermaid

Welcome to Cruisecritic. Pfelling gauge at 271cm. All other stretches down to Budapest naturally better as a general rule. If Pfelling falls much further and no rain falls in Austria the Danube Bend (Esztergom) can get too low. No reliable forecast for 6 October available yet. Forecast for Pfelling (36 hours) not looking good. notamermaid

Still not looking good. Tiny ups and downs and now Dresden is at 67cm again. Rain is forecast for Europe and the way the clouds are expected to drift the Elbe basin and much of the Czech Republic could get a lot of it. notamermaid

Closure of the case of the horrible accident in Budapest? It may finally be but the captain can appeal. Just for your info (I decided against dragging up the thread from five years ago): https://travelweekly.co.uk/news/tourism/river-cruise-ship-captain-jailed-after-fatal-danube-crash notamermaid

The level at Pfelling is now at 274cm. It fluctuated during the night with minimally higher figures but keeps the downward trend. Regensburg is now (again) on its official statistical low water level. notamermaid

Welcome to Europe and "my" river and thank you for saying hello. I have had that problem a couple of times and fixed it via my computer but from a smartphone I am not sure what to do. notamermaid

Well, a few years ago I created the legend of a malevolent giant snake that gobbles up the water at will. It may just be the lock personnel retaining the water upstream from Straubing but I am still suspicious. Sorry. Up to Passau (and Vilshofen) things should be fine but there is a risk that Viking may need to make the dreaded announcement... The clouds have shifted so the rain will sweep through but with the centre having moved further North and taking more of the water to the Czech Republic and the Elbe basin rather than to the Danube basin. Rain currently expected in Bavaria for the early hours of Saturday. If the direction remains as forecast the Danube in Austria will get more water than the Danube in Germany. Current forecast for Pfelling suggests that the level will not fall much further and could rise a little but most likely stay below 290cm. Again, Pfelling is Pfelling so the situation is highly uncertain. Over on the Rhine the level is satisfactory but also falling. notamermaid

@Canal archive Interesting photo. The narrowboats being so small I never figured they would have used cranes. But It makes perfect sense, I mean the boats did not carry that much load, but it was sure heavy enough to speed up loading and save on manpower otherwise needed. @Host Jazzbeau Thank you for the photos, I was going to mention Gdansk. Highly interesting city - I have been there - and the crane is quite a sight. notamermaid

A quick look at Kaub. 131cm. The forecast suggests a tiny rise. The probability chart differs a little from this, we see the two computer models not fully agreeing. However, the chart still puts the 100cm on 3rd October with the level most likely dropping on the 4th - and the 5th lower still. I am treating this with a pinch of salt at the moment. But a steady decline does look certain. Okay, I think we will look at this again some time at the weekend and go back to the topic of cranes. notamermaid

In my post above I called it "flooding" in the graph. A bit awkward perhaps, I only meant it in relation to the amount of water that came through in a short space of time. A wave. As you can see that level was not high enough to be called flooding of the kind that would alert the authorities. Up here in Germany at Pfelling the situation has worsened since yesterday. The figure now is 276cm. A screenshot of the graph (the data centre is in Regensburg, hence the name in the bottom right corner): notamermaid

Pfelling is down to 282cm. Let us have a look at Budapest: You can clearly see the flooding we had at the beginning of the month. Since then the Danube has gradually lost water again, first fast and then more slowly. With the weather being pleasant throughout most of Europe the slow decline continues but quite possibly Budapest will see a rise with rain that is to come just before it gets too low for comfort. Fingers crossed. You are probably not wondering but here for your info is the figure for Budapest in the extreme drought of 2018: 36cm on 25 October 2018. Still a long way to go from 150cm to that. notamermaid

My pleasure. Thank you for your kind words. Have had that bug since I was sixteen I think but have done much more research in the last fifteen years due to working in tourism and private projects. My favourite room in palaces? The library! Before I get back to cranes. From what past passengers have written river cruise companies give out good maps on the ships, especially of the castles in the Rhine Gorge. They are probably enough but if one would like the perhaps almost iconic and standard tourist map of the course of the Rhine it is this one: https://www.rahmel-verlag.de/de/staedte_regionen/produkte_details.php?prod_id=42 "Available from all good souvenir shops". It seriously is the map to offer tourists in the towns along the river and you can get it online of course, probably even in America. And if you want the "whole" river it is this map: https://www.rahmel-verlag.de/de/produkte/produkte_details.php?prod_id=43 notamermaid

After initially keeping above 290cm during the morning, Pfelling is now at 285cm. It is still a bright day but clouds are forming. No rain of any note in Southern Germany though for today. notamermaid

About locks, just to add. Iffezheim is not the last lock you go through on a river cruise from Basel to Amsterdam. Most of you will probably know this but it may not be obvious to some. Amsterdam is a bit of a distance from the Rhine. The city is connected to the river system by the Amsterdam Rhine Canal. The Canal is 72km long and has three locks. This is where it is: https://www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/water/vaarwegenoverzicht/amsterdam-rijnkanaal notamermaid

Yes, kilometre markers kind of all the way, i.e. from Lake Constance. This looks to be an interesting website in English: http://rhine.riverama.com/rhine-km.php It mentions inaccuracies. That is correct. Here is one - the famous "kurzer Kilometer" at the beginning of the Rhine Gorge: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kurzer_Kilometer.jpg This Wikipedia page has the list of locks (Schleusen): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinschifffahrt Various locks have their own pages on Wikipedia or elsewhere, sometimes also in English. Short video of Iffezheim lock run dry for maintenance with time lapse when in operation: https://www.wsa-oberrhein.wsv.de/Webs/WSA/Oberrhein/DE/SharedDocs/Videos/Schleuse-Iffezheim.mp4;jsessionid=26854837173543D39F5432A7374B101E.live21323?__blob=publicationFile&v=3 Completely forgot: have a great cruise! notamermaid

Okay, I am back from the library. Here it is from one of the pages on the website elwis.de: As you read from left to right you read the depth of the navigation channel in the downstream direction. Locks up to Iffezheim, free flowing after that. Depth of navigation channel from kilometres 508 to 557 is 1.9m, reference point is Kaub at a level of 77cm. Kaub is at km 546.3. The river itself has a large range of depths, from obvious shallows around islands and rock formations and notorious places where gravel collects to deep ravines that can easily "swallow" ships - two or three on top of each other. Yes, the deepest ravine on the navigable Rhine is at the famous Lorelei rock - 25m. notamermaid

My pleasure, moonriver54. As I indicated yesterday, things are looking good along the Rhine. Kaub gauge area, for us here meaning from just before Rüdesheim to just before Lahnstein near Koblenz, is the only area where we may see low levels that are of significance at this specific time. But we are not near such a situation just that the river is losing water as it is not replenished fast enough by rain in the upper reaches and by Lake Constance. Having said that, the recent rain has helped all over - also Lake Constance - and we are seeing the effect at Kaub since Saturday. Not much but enough to keep us going, that is ensuring the level stays half decent for commercial shipping and pleasant for river cruise ships. 140cm is the level at Kaub right now, 130cm is forecast for Thursday, the probability chart now takes the level down to 100cm on 3rd October with the potential for lower on the 4th. Which would put you in the Rhine Gorge when the level is almost at its lowest before a rise may happen. So overall, not looking bad but there is from today's perspective a minimal risk of "adjusted sailing times" which is all the responsibility of your captain and I will leave it at that. As for the other parts of the Rhine - just to explain - they are either controlled by locks or deeper than the Rheingau area (between Mainz and Rüdesheim/Bingen) and the Rhine Gorge. I know that those sailing the river may frown at my not perfectly accurate geography but I wanted to keep it simple with familiar places just to explain the overall situation. Somewhere hidden in my bookmarks is a profile of the river's depths. I am off to the virtual library to try and find it, could take some time. notamermaid