Changelog

Every fee the city harbour charges is published. It is just published in four different places — a fee schedule reached through Municode, a moorage agreement, a wait-list application and the harbour page — so most people find out what a season costs when the bills arrive. The new page takes your boat's length and the handful of choices you actually make, and adds the published rates up line by line, showing the arithmetic for each one so you can check it against the city's own schedule. The 5% sales tax is its own line; it appears on the harbour's paperwork rather than on the fee schedule, and a total without it would be short. It also works out the either/or choices. The launch permit beats paying per launch from the 7th launch of the year; the parking permit from the 23rd day, or the 12th if you are parking a truck and trailer. And the tunnel: against the 30-ticket book, the seasonal pass does not pay for itself until about 74 round trips a year in a car, or 60 towing a trailer. For most people the book is cheaper than the pass. Two things the page will not tell you, because nobody publishes them: whether a berth is free, and how long the wait list is. What it can tell you is what joining costs — 50 dollars a year plus tax, for each size band you join — and the rules that lose you your place.

Official NOAA high and low tide predictions for Whittier — for the boat launch, the harbor, and time along the shore. It pairs with the Passage Canal wind page, and reminds you that a strong wind up the canal can push the real water off the prediction.

Cruise Ship Days now carries every scheduled call from mid-July to the last ship on October 5, with departure times and passenger counts — so the days ahead show the real port traffic again instead of running out mid-season.

A colored-pencil drawing of the lone fourteen-storey building that houses most of Whittier, at the head of the fjord beneath snow-streaked mountains, now heads the town page.

Reads the live forecast for the water off Whittier and shows, hour by hour, when the wind eases enough to be out in a skiff or kayak — banded on the Beaufort scale. It's about the water, not the tunnel: wind doesn't close the tunnel, and the marine forecast and harbor have the final word.

A new planner for the round trip through the Anton Anderson Tunnel. Tell it when you need to be in Anchorage and it works back to the tunnel window to catch and when to leave; it always shows the last way home tonight and the latest you can leave Anchorage to make it, so you are not left on the wrong side overnight. It is the published schedule, not a live feed, and links Alaska 511 for live status.

Whittier is built around one fact: the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel is the only road in or out, it shares a single lane with the railroad, and it closes every night. The town page leads with a tunnel tool that works out, from your clock, the next opening each way and the last way home tonight — with the tolls, a seasonal-pass break-even calculator, and a flag for the freezing-weather rule. Alongside it: which days cruise ships are in and how busy the waterfront will be, who to call when there is no hospital in town, and a noticeboard for the picks and tips that usually travel by word of mouth.