Dry Dock Part 1

Well I know a lot of you have been waiting a long time for me to tell you about Dry Dock. Now that we are starting the crossing cruise and cast change I have some time to tell you about dry dock.

I arrived back at the ship a few days before Dry dock. I met all the new stage staff when I arrived and was pleasantly surprised to learn that two of them were interested in lights. Wow that means I will have some help fixing things with people that actually want to learn what I am teaching.

We offloaded all of the passengers and a lot of the crew, and loaded on a lot of contractors in England and headed to Germany soon after they were all off the ship.

After a day and a half at Sea we arrived in Germany. Once we got close to the dry dock we had to lower all 4 of our tenders, and 1 life boat. Because the ship is still relatively new no maintenance was needed to be done on them, the ship just had to get them out of the way of other things that had to be done.

Into the dry dock we went, it was actually a fairly fast process only taking what seamed like a hour. Then they locked us in with a large metal gate or sorts. Then it was time to drain the water and put the ship high and dry for about three weeks.

We soon started all of the work that we had to do around the ship, but at the same time many other things were happening around the ship.

For all of DD everyone on board had to eat in the Windjammer Cafe. That is what the passengers use as the Alternative Casual Dining. We had to do this because the staff and crew mess were both completely torn apart to gain access to the slewing gears for the azzi pods. Even the crew bar had to be relocated to the pool deck. That certainly made for a few cold nights just to have a beer after a long day of work.

The major reason that the ship was going into DD was to add a diesel engine to the ship. This is purely due to fuel cost savings. Currently we are running two gas turbine engines, just like you would find on a DC10. The problem is these run 100%, 100% of the time. So when you are just siting in port, or don't need to go fast, you are still burning the same fuel as if we are going full speed. When we don't need to go fast or are sitting in port we will now only use the diesel, doing this will save about $900 per hour in fuel savings.

Stay tuned for more.