Dear Editor: At last week’s Cruise Forum, Chris McGraw revealed that Proposition 1 would cause Royal Caribbean in 2026 to withdraw its two ships with maximum capacity exceeding the proposition’s daily limit of 4,500 passengers ashore.
He implied Norwegian Cruise Lines will do the same, when he said ships with a maximum capacity of over 4,500 passengers will be “gone, ... roughly 65% of [Sitka’s] traffic.”
His 65% is a big exaggeration, as clearly shown by evaluation of Cruise Line Agencies of Alaska’s 2026 schedule.
Only four ships are affected: Royal’s Ovation and Anthem, and Norwegian’s Bliss and Joy. Their maximum capacities range from 4,622 to 4,981. (Sitkans are familiar with these ships’ commonly published “lower berth capacities” of 3,852 to 4,180.)
In fact, withdrawing the four ships would reduce 2026 passenger capacity by 41% – less than two-thirds of what McGraw claimed – bringing capacity from 588,075 down to 345,276.
That leaves just eleven days still above the large-ship 4,500 daily cap. (Ships under 250 passengers don’t count toward the caps.) Adjusting those days in the schedule, and a few more, the schedule will be slightly under the annual cap of 300,000.
There is a clear path to 300,000 – despite opponents’ claims that reaching 300,000 is impossible.
A further word: Proposition One’s intent is that largest ships that have visited Sitka can still do so, at least some of the time. CLAA’s 2023 data on the number of passengers onboard every port call shows this would have worked during 2023’s May ramp-up and September ramp-down. Ovation could have visited three times, Quantum six times, and Bliss seven times, with a substantial cushion between onboard numbers and the daily cap. (Joy didn’t call.)
This letter to the editor summarizes a memo I delivered to the Tourism Commission at its May 8 meeting.
Larry Edwards, Sitka
