Cruise lines seek access to Kaua'i port
By Michele Kayal
Advertiser Staff Writer
Cruise lines bringing the industry's biggest ships to Hawai'i won't know until this fall — just before they get here — whether they will be able to stop in Kaua'i as planned.
Advertiser library photo • March 27, 2001
Harbor pilots working Nawiliwili have twice refused to land Celebrity Cruise Lines' Infinity, the first of a new generation of extra-large cruise ships that began calling in Hawai'i this year.
Passengers disembark Celebrity Cruise Lines' Infinity at Honolulu Harbor. The extra-large cruise ship can maneuver fine in that harbor, but it is too long to maneuver Nawiliwili, Kaua'i's main port, and harbor pilots there have twice refused to land it. Three more ships the same size as the Infinity are due in Hawai'i this year.
The pilots have said the 965-foot ship — the largest ever to come to the Islands — is too long to maneuver through Kaua'i's S-shaped main port.
Three more ships the same size are due in Hawai'i this year, including Norwegian Cruise Line's Star, which will make Honolulu its home port.
At a meeting yesterday in Honolulu, Pilot representatives agreed with about 30 cruise executives, Coast Guard officers, harbors officials and shipping agents to ride the new ships during cruises this summer to work with the crews and see how the vessels perform.
"There's a lot of apprehension about Nawiliwili and there's not enough knowledge on the part of the pilots," said Hawai'i harbors administrator Thomas Fujikawa.
"We need to have the pilots get on the ships, play with them and see what their comfort level is," he said.
Some of the pilots have spent many hours in training on simulators both in Copenhagen and Florida, said pilot Steve Baker, and some have ridden the ships.
But the group's lobbyist, Linda Kapuniai Rosehill, likened the simulator experience to working on a Sony PlayStation.
The group will meet again at the end of the summer, Fujikawa and other attendees said, and will decide then whether the ships will be able to stop in Kaua'i.
The pilots' main concern is running a ship aground and blocking the port.
The cruise lines have already promised Kaua'i to passengers through bro-chures, and many of the cruises have already been sold, cruise executives said.
None offered a backup.
"We'll have to address it when it comes," said Kaare Bakke, Norwegian Cruise Line's vice president of port operations, whose company will bring the Star to Honolulu in December.
Representatives of Carnival and Royal Caribbean cruise lines, which will both bring ships longer than 960 feet to the Islands in October, could not be reached for comment.
If the ships are barred from Kaua'i harbor, visitor industry executives worry the island could be left out of Hawai'i's cruise boom.
"If they're hitting their heads against a wall for Kaua'i, I'm pretty sure in 2002 they would remove us from the brochure," said Sue Kanoho, Kaua'i Visitors Bureau chief executive.
