Cruise Ship Undergoes Unexpected Dry Dock With Guests On Board

When a cruise ship goes into dry dock, the ship is mostly empty of visitors and out of service at some stage in the upkeep or repairs. Cunard Line’s Queen Victoria, nevertheless, is now present process a quick dry dock in mid-cruise, with visitors nonetheless aboard the vessel in a really distinctive port of name expertise, one certain to thrill any passengers all for nautical engineering.

Queen Victoria Unexpected Dry Dock

The Vista-class Queen Victoria is at the moment crusing a 15-night spherical journey, Canary Islands “Celebration” New Year’s cruise. Cadiz was a deliberate port of name for the vessel – it’s a well-liked vacation spot in southern Spain – however has not fairly gone as anticipated.

Guests had been knowledgeable at embarkation that the ship could be getting into dry dock on January 2, 2023, and because of the diversion, the scheduled port of name to Lisbon, Portugal, on January 4 could be cancelled.

“Queen Victoria will be going into a dry dock in Cadiz during your voyage,” a letter from the ship’s grasp, Captain Tomas Connery, said.

Rather than docking within the coronary heart of the historic and colourful Andalusian metropolis, Queen Victoria is in dry dock on the Navantia shipyard in Cadiz. The location shouldn’t be so totally different than the passenger cruise terminals, nevertheless, because the dry dock facility is simply .8 miles (1.3 kilometers) from the standard port of name dock.

The sudden diversion to dry dock is because of points with one of many ship’s Azipod engines, which has been inflicting extreme vibrations on the vessel’s aft in latest months. A propeller blade on the engine wants changing, which requires the ship to be in dry dock for applicable repairs.

It ought to be famous that not one of the ship’s security options or resort and visitor operations are impacted.

“Whilst in dry dock, our service and activities on board will largely continue as normal,” Connery stated.

While in dry dock, visitors had been supplied with complimentary shuttles to the downtown space to benefit from the metropolis’s wealthy historical past, beautiful structure, and numerous markets. Because of the exercise of the shipyard, visitors weren’t permitted to stroll downtown, however the shuttles had been anticipated to function on a daily schedule for visitors’ comfort.

On the morning of Wednesday, January 4, 2023, the dry dock could be flooded to refloat the ship, which is predicted to set sail as soon as extra inside just a few hours. The ship’s deliberate arrival again to Southampton on January 7 has not be impacted.

Port Changes

Queen Victoria had already been scheduled to spend Tuesday, January 3 in Cadiz, however because of the want for this emergency dry dock, the scheduled port of name to Lisbon, Portugal, on January 4 was cancelled, and pre-booked shore excursions had been robotically cancelled and refunded. “We apologise for this change and thank you for your understanding,” the letter learn.

While the 2 ports are solely about 300 miles (483 kilometers) from each other, cancelling the port name to Lisbon ensures the brand new engine might be correctly examined, and there’s a margin of additional time in case repairs take longer than anticipated.

The ship was in a position to go to the opposite ports of name on the Canary Islands itinerary, together with Arrecife, Puerto del Rosario, Santa Cruz de la Palma, and Tenerife, in addition to Funchal in Portugal.

The subsequent cruise, because the ship repositions briefly to Hamburg, Germany, has not been affected.

Queen Victoria first entered service for Cunard in 2007. The 90,049-gross-ton ship can welcome as many as 2,081 visitors (double occupancy) on every voyage, and has 900 worldwide crew members aboard to offer Cunard’s signature elite service.

The ship final had a serious, $54 million refurbishment in 2017, however has since undergone smaller, common refreshments, most not too long ago in 2022 previous to restarting post-pandemic passenger service.