AidaStella and MSC Preziosa Join World Cruise Fleet

by Kevin Griffin writing for cybercruises.com

AidaStella sailing the Elba River to Hamburg

AidaStella, 71,300 gross tons, 831 x 106′, 2,194 lower berths
Saturday saw the naming in Warnemünde of Aida Cruises’ tenth cruise ship, AidaStella, completed recently by shipbuilder Meyer Werft in Papenburg. Last of the latest series of seven “smaller” ships, she will be followed in 2015 and 2016 by two 125,000-tonners of a totally new design from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Japan.

The ten godmothers for AidaStella included eight Aida employees from different countries and departments, and a representative each from Meyer Werft and naval architects Partner Ship Design. Aida of course is the German arm of Carnival Corp & plc, reporting to the Costa Cruises Group in Genoa, where former Aida president Michael Thamm is now ceo.

As seagoing “club resorts”, Aida ships have many on-board amenities and facilities that attract younger, more active holidaymakers and families. Much of the dining, for example, is buffet style.

The evening ceremony was celebrated with “stellar” fireworks, stella of course being the Latin word for star. AidaStella spent the night in Warnemünde before setting off on Sunday for her maiden voyage to Oslo, Southampton, Le Havre and Amsterdam and Genoa, where she is due to arrive on Friday.

Of AidaStella’s 1,097 passenger cabins, roughly two-thirds (722), have balconies. Included are thirty-nine spa cabins with direct access to the large spa with its glass roof. The ship also comes fully equipped with seven restaurants and twelve bars, including the Bella Donna for Italian regional specialties and gourmet restaurant Rossini.

AidaStella has her own red wine and an exclusive AidaStella beer will be available on board, in Swarovski-designed crystal-studded ‘starry’ beer glasses.

 

MSC Preziosa, 139,072 gross tons, 1093 x 125′, 3,478 lower berths.
To the south, Thursday saw STX France deliver the MSC Preziosa to MSC Cruises in St Nazaire. After a ribbon-cutting ceremony, she is now cruising by way of Lisbon, Cadiz, Casablanca, Valencia and Marseilles to Genoa, where she will be officially named.

MSC Cruises took over this ship, which was originally ordered in 2010 by Libya’s General National Maritime Transport Company, on the stocks last year. Of MSC’s own Fantasia class, naval architects De Jorio Design International were responsible for the end design.

MSC Fantasia

The fourth of the Fantasia class ships, MSC Preziosa has 100 cabins more than earlier vessels, and becomes the line’s new flagship. Like the AidaStella she also has a Swarovski feature, in her case her sweeping grand staircases. Other features include a magical “infinity” pool for adults only and a revised rear lounge arrangement, casino and disco.

Like the other Fantasia class ships, Preziosa features an exclusive, but enlarged in her case, MSC Yacht Club suite area, with dedicated facilities, private decks and forward-facing lounge on top of the ship.

Almost double the size of AidaStella, MSC Preziosa counts among the ten largest ships in the world. Royal Caribbean International has five larger, seven when Quantum of the Seas and Anthem of the Seas deliver in 2014 and 2015. Norwegian Breakaway (to enter service in May) and Norwegian Getaway (2014) will also exceed her size, as do Queen Mary 2 and Norwegian Epic.

MSC Preziosa has eleven shopping venues, including new perfumery and cosmetics shop La Profumeria and two jewellery shops, Il Gioiello for high-end jewels and the new Fashion Bijoux for costume jewellery. Fantasia class favourites include duty-free Mini Mall, designer watch and sunglass shop L’Angolo dell’Oggetto, La Boutique for men’s, women’s and children’s fashions, the Pool Shop, MSC Logo Shop, sweet shop La Caramella, Accessories Shop for upmarket bags, belts and leather goods and the MSC Photo Shop.

MSC Preziosa is due to be named on Saturday by the line’s longtime permanent godmother Sophia Loren.

Additional Ship Introduced To North Atlantic Cargo-Passenger Service

 

News has reached us, via our London office, from F Laeisz in Rostock that its eight-passenger Panamax container ship CSAV Pyrenées will join the MSC North Atlantic service with her first sailing from New York on Saturday, September 22. Service will be every five weeks thereafter.

The 35-day round voyage will cover the following ports: Felixstowe, Antwerp, Le Havre, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Norfolk, New York, Bremerhaven and Felixstowe.

CSAV Pyrenées began life as Pohang Senator in 1998 and has berths for eight passengers in four suites. Subject to final confirmation, fares are likely to be €89 per person per day double and €99 per day for sole occupancy. Port charges of €85 and deviation insurance of €107 per passenger are additional in each case.

CSAV Pyrenées has four suites that can also be sold for single occupancy:

Twin suite No 1, D Deck, beds 6’7″  x 2’7″, view may be obscured by cargo
Twin  suite No 2, D Deck, beds 6’7″ x 2’7″, free view from the living room, starboard side
Twin suite No 3, E Deck, beds 6’7″ x 2’7″, free view from the living room
Double suite No 4, E Deck, bed 6’7″ x 4’7″, free view from bedroom, starboard side

Each suite has  a total area of about 200 sq ft with bedroom, sitting room, shower/wc, refrigerator,desk and chair, double wardrobe, seating area, tape deck, multi-system VCR, radio and cd player.

Non-US/Canadian citizens must be in possession of a full US B1/B2 Visa for this voyage as cargo ships are not signatory to the US visa waiver schemes. ESTA’s will not be accepted.

For further details please call Miri Lopusna at The Cruise People Ltd in London on 020 7723 2450 or e-mail cruise@cruisepeople.co.uk or Fred Cherney in Toronto at 1.800.961.5536 Ext 22 or fcherney@freighters.ca.

Reaction To North American ECA

by Kevin Griffin writing for cybercruises.com

Last Wednesday, August 1, a new North American Emission Control Area came into effect, with rules that call for a maximum sulphur content of 1% for fuel burned within 200 nautical miles of most of the coast of North America. By August 1, 2015, this limit will be lowered to 0.1%. With the approval of the International Maritime Organisation, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the United States and Transport Canada have introduced the rules, and the respective Coast Guards of each country will be responsible for their enforcement.

The penalty for any infringement is $25,000 per day, or $30,000 if records are not kept correctly, although Canada will not be fully enforcing the new ECA for several months yet, as it is still in discussion with its own domestic marine industry over fleet averaging.

The immediate potential cost to the industry is relatively easy to calculate, as many ships will now have to burn more expensive fuel. On the date of implementation, for example, the price per tonne of 1% sulphur fuel in major US ports was 21% higher than that of the Intermediate Fuel Oil (IFO380) that is usually burned by many ships today.

For a ship that burns 100 tonnes per day, for example, the extra cost at $129 per tonne, would amount to $12,900 per day while at sea. Disney, which has changed routes more frequently than any other cruise line, has been fast off the mark, asking visitors to its web site “Do you think Disney Cruise Line will discontinue their Alaskan Cruises? Or, would you be willing to pay upwards of $150 per person in a fuel surcharge in order to keep this or any other unique itinerary?”

Last week, the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) released an estimate that indicated that, if enforced as proposed, the new ECA regulations would cause the number of cruise passengers visiting North American ports to fall by 2.2 million, resulting in a loss of 14,000 jobs and an economic loss of $1.5 billion annually to local economies.

For some time now, CLIA has been proposing an emissions-averaging scheme instead of the current plan which simply calls for fuels with no more than 1% sulphur to be used within the ECA zone. CLIA’s approach would be a form of weighted averaging based on air quality, whereby participating cruise ships would consume low sulphur fuels where the human health benefits were the greatest, such as in or near ports, and conventional fuels where the human health benefits are minimal, such as at sea or away from population centres.

The use of shore power in a growing number of ports could also be taken into account but under CLIA’s proposal no community would be subjected to higher emissions from a cruise ship than current levels and the global limits on sulphur content would continue to apply to all fuel consumption.

For several months now, the Bunkerworld web site has been covering both sides of the argument, and its headlines, many of them antagonistic towards the cruise industry, make an interesting read:

April 19: Cruise industry ECA ‘sulphur averaging’ method on thin ice. Model that might allow higher sulphur fuel to be used near low-density pollution areas ‘has not gone down well’ with regulators.

May 2: Cruise industry’s alternative ECA plan splitting opinions. EPA not in favour of CLIA’s sulphur averaging proposal but industry is lobbying Congress for support.

May 23: EPA ‘apoplectic’ over cruise industry sulphur proposals. ‘Flexibility’ for cruise industry could mean emissions ‘ten times’ greater than would achieved by following ECA regulations.

June 6: Cruise lines exaggerating ECA challenges. CLIA’s proposal for flexibility is a ‘flawed’ scheme ‘that will expose communities to harmful pollution’

July 3: Cruise industry seeks alternative compliance to North American ECA. ‘We are looking for a way to comply with the ECA; we are not seeking an exception. That is the spirit we have taken from the very beginning.’

July 23: Cruise line members want to see ECA flexibility. Cruising in Pacific North could be curtailed by bunker shortages and higher prices.

Outside the cruise industry, Boston-based short-sea shipping operator CSL International has called for the limit to be reduced to 50 miles in 2015 for vessels of less than 20,000 horsepower, as use of the low sulphur fuel beyond that distance may not provide any appreciable environmental benefit.

In Europe, meanwhile, ferry companies have proposed delaying the implementation of the lower 0.1% limit.

Meanwhile, on July 13, the State of Alaska filed a lawsuit seeking relief from the enforcement of the ECA in Alaskan waters, saying that the extension of the ECA to Alaska was unlawful because two-thirds of the US Senate had not consented to the extension as required by the US Constitution.

Alaska therefore requested that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s acceptance of the ECA’s extending to Alaska be set aside and the enforcement of the ECA in Alaskan waters be permanently prevented. The defendants in this action were named as the Secretary of State, the EPA, the US Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security.

For the cruise ship industry, Alaska estimates the ECA would mean 585,000 fewer visitors to the state, resulting in $150 million less income for Alaskan workers and $180 million less direct spending by Alaska tourists.

Not only that, but in a state that is heavily dependent on imports through the port of Anchorage, the effect on cargo would be in increase shipping costs of between 8% and 20%.

Over at Congress, where CLIA has been lobbying hard for the ECA regulations to be revised, the EPA does not seem to have many friends. In a late June press release, for example, legislators said the EPA was “an agency that has been has been rife with governmental overreach, overspending on ineffective and unnecessary programs, and costly and questionable regulations.”

When announcing their fiscal year 2013 Interior and Environment Appropriations bill, the House Appropriations Committee said the legislation “reflects significant efforts to rein in the EPA” and “includes provisions to rein in various problematic, costly, and potentially job-killing regulatory actions.”  It also singled out the EPA as a federal agency that mandates “overly burdensome regulatory hurdles.”

The bill reins in funding and out-of-control regulation at the EPA, funding it at $7 billion, which is $1.4 billion, or 17% less than fiscal year 2012. It also maintains a cap on EPA personnel at the lowest number since 1992 and makes cuts to other EPA programs and funding.

“The bill reins in funding and out-of-control regulation at the EPA,” said Interior Subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson. House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers said it would prevent the EPA from “stepping out of their lane and stifling our economic recovery.”

The jury is still out on whether Congress will be able to help the cruise industry, but it is interesting that even after the official implementation date Canada is still negotiating fleet averaging with its own marine industry.

Queen Elizabeth 2 to Become 300-Room Hotel at Port Rashid

by Kevin Griffin of The Cruise People writing in cybercruises.com

Good news came from Dubai recently. After five years of lying dormant, the former Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth 2 is not now going to be lengthened and converted with a see-through funnel and lifeboats removed, but will remain much as she is and will be converted to a 300-room hotel at Port Rashid, near where Dubai’s cruse ships call.

Talks are now under way with three hotel groups, including Dubai’s Jumeirah chain, to manage the new hotel.

Although many will not want me to make the comparison, the ex-Cunarder Queen Mary, which entered service in 1936, now operating as the Queen Mary Hotel in Long Beach, has 314 rooms. So in terms of size the two operations will be similar.

Queen Elizabeth 2, on the other hand, was launched by Queen Elizabeth II in 1967 and went into service in 1969.

Istithmar, part of Dubai World and owners of the QE2, has announced that the revised hotel plan is to come into operation within 18 months as the centrepiece of an entertainment village that will include a maritime museum. Istithmar bought the ship from Cunard for about $100 million in 2007 and plans to open the ship on the man-made island of Palm Jumeirah were shelved with the recession. The ship is now registered in Port Vila, Vanuatu.

del.icio.us Tags: Queen Elizabeth 2,QE2

In the Wake of s.s. Keewatin

 

A personal note from Kevin Griffin writing for cybercruises.com : I have a particular interest in s.s. Keewatin as I was privileged at the age of 17 to land my first real job – as a waiter – on board her sister ship s.s. Assiniboia. This was during their last summer of passenger service and just before I entered university.

Keewatin and Assiniboia were built on the Clyde in 1907 and operated Canadian Pacific’s Great Lakes Steamship Service, sailing weekly from Port McNicoll, on Georgian Bay, to Sault Ste Marie and on to the Canadian Lakehead at Port Arthur and Fort William (which combined into Thunder Bay in 1970).

The pay was $173.58 per month but that was upped almost immediately to $240 once I was on board. Meals and berth were included and tips were an added bonus. Clothing requirements were“black shoes, white shirts, black bow tie, navy blue trousers and old clothing for work in port. Jackets are supplied and the navy trousers can be purchased at Del Hasting’s Men’s Wear in Midland.”
The jackets were blue serge with brass buttons and were quite warm on a hot summer’s day at lunchtime!

Keewatin sailed on Wednesdays and Assiniboia on Saturdays and the two ships met at Sault Ste Marie every Sunday. The cost of such an “Inland Sea” cruise in those days was $90 per person in an inside cabin or $100 in an outside, and the fare included passage Port McNicoll-Fort William and return, berth and meals aboard ship and hotel room and meals in Fort William while the ship handled cargo. These cruises, which were offered twice weekly, thus consisted of five nights, one of which was spent ashore.

When the boat train from Toronto came alongside at Port McNicoll at 3 pm, passengers boarded the ship, followed by the waiters carrying their luggage (and freshly laundered sheets, towels and uniforms from the Royal York Hotel laundry in Toronto) and she sailed promptly at 3:15 – just fifteen minutes later! At the Lakehead there were rail connections to and from the Pacific via Canadian Pacific’s famous Trans-Continental express “The Canadian.”

The next season, with the passenger service gone (although Assiniboia still carried cargo for a while), I was given a ticket on “The Canadian” and assigned to Canadian Pacific’s British Columbia Coast Steamship Service, where I joined Princess Patricia, cruising from Vancouver to Alaska. She was built in the same shipyard as Assiniboia and Keewatin and gave her name to Princess Cruises when she was chartered to Stan McDonald of Seattle for two winters cruising from Los Angeles to Mexico.

We had to remove all the Mexican decorations in preparation for her next Alaska season. One difference on the West Coast was that the waiters wore cooler white jackets for lunch.

Having sailed as a four-year-old from Liverpool to Montreal in Canadian Pacific’s second Empress of Canada, and later worked for the company in Montreal, I had not only immigrated to Canada with them, but had also managed to collect three employee numbers – in Port McNicoll, Vancouver and Montreal!

Meanwhile I crossed the Atlantic again in the third Empress of Canada in 1970. Two years later, as Mardi Gras, she became the start of Carnival Cruise Lines and right up until to-day’s Carnival Breeze, every Carnival ship has had an “Empress Deck.”

I was privileged to be one of only a few that were invited to join the final leg of the tow of Canadian Pacific’s last surviving passenger ship, s.s. Keewatin, from Mackinaw City back to her home port of Port McNicoll, where she arrived at 1:30 pm on June 23, a hundred years to the day after her first passenger departure from the then-new port, which opened in 1912.

Under the auspices of Skyline International Development Inc of Toronto,  Keewatin will become the centrepiece of a new waterfront park in the newly-revived resort community of Port McNicoll.

Leaving Mackinaw City on June 19, this is a record of the voyage.

OTHER CRUISE NEWS

Cruising the Great Lakes in 2012

Keewatin and her sister ship Assinboia stopped cruising the Great Lakes in 1965, but forty-seven years later there has been a revival in cruising the Great Lakes and New York-based Travel Dynamics International still have space on the following departures this summer on its 138-berth m.v. Yorktown.

Great Lakes Grand Discovery – 11 nights
Detroit to Duluth via the Great Lakes, with fares starting at $5,295 per person (not including $500 per person booking incentive). July 21 – August 6, 2012

Great Lakes Grand Discovery – 10 nights
Duluth to Detroit via the Great Lakes, with fares starting at $4,995 (not including $500 per person booking incentive). August 1 – 11, 2012

Discovering a North American Treasure – 7 nights
Chicago to Quebec via the St Lawrence Seaway, with fares starting at $3,995 per person (not including $500 per person booking incentive). August 8 – 18 and August 18 – 25, 2012.

America’s Enchanting Seaway: From the Great Lakes to the St. Lawrence – 7 nights
Detroit to Quebec via the St Lawrence Seaway, with fares starting at $3,995 per person (not including $500 per person booking incentive). August 25 – September 1, 2012.

(Kevin Griffin is managing director of The Cruise People Ltd in London, England.)

LiveJournal Tags: Empess of Canada,Keewatin,Mardi Gras,Port McNicholl,Thunder Bay,Port Arthur,Fort William,Yorktown,Carnival Breeze,Assinaboa

QE2 to Host Visitors Again as Hotel in Dubai

English: The Cunard Liner RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 anchored off South Queensferry on her last tour round the UK. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Dubai has settled on a use for Queen Elizabeth 2 which it bought for $US100 million, with plans to make it into a floating hotel fitted with the original furnishings.

The chairman of the Dubai company that owns the ship said to-day he expects the 300-room hotel to open within 18 months at the city’s downtown Port Rashid.

Istithmar World Chairman Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem says the company realized visitors want to see the QE2 as it originally looked, so is not planning major changes as part of the conversion.

The ship’s fate has been the subject of intense speculation since Dubai bought it in 2007. Original plans to completely overhaul it as a luxury hotel were scrapped when Dubai’s economy tumbled into crisis.

del.icio.us Tags: QE2,Queen Elizabeth 2

Salvage Work Begins on Costa Concordia

Costa Concordia Polski: Statek pasażerski Costa Concordia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Work to salvage Costa Concordia, which stranded off the island of Giglio on the Tuscan coast on Friday the 13th of January, taking with her 32 lives (one in every 132 on board), is set to begin in days, it was announced on Friday. Leading the project will be Titan Salvage of Pompano Beach, Florida, part of the Crowley Group, who along with Italian partner Micoperi, were awarded the contract last month to refloat and remove the crippled 114,147-ton ship. Since its founding in 1980, Titan has performed more than 350 salvage and wreck removal projects.

An evaluation team with representatives from Costa Crociere, Carnival Corporation & plc, London Offshore Consultants and Standard P&I Club, along with classification society RINA and shipbuilders Fincantieri selected the final plan. Key to the winning Titan-Micoperi bid was the proposal to remove the wreck in one piece to minimise environmental damage on Giglio.

The project is expected to take about a year and will be divided into four stages. The fuel has already been removed as part of Costa’s commitment to minimize the environmental impact of the shipwreck.

The process will involve the construction of a platform below sea level and attaching watertight caissons to the ship’s side above water. Two cranes attached to the platform will then pull the ship upright, aided by the water-filled caissons. Once the ship is up on the platform, more caissons will be attached to the other side of the hull. The caissons on both sides of the ship will then be drained and filled with air. Once refloated, the wreck will be towed to an Italian port for processing in accordance with Italian regulations.

Finally, the sea bottom will be cleaned and marine flora replanted after the Concordia is removed. The refloating plan prioritises safety and the protection of Giglio’s economy and tourism industry. As well, salvage workers are not expected to have an adverse impact on the availability of hotel rooms for Giglio’s summer trade as the project’s operating base with be located on the mainland.

Also last week, Francesco Schettino, the captain of the ill-fated Costa Concordia, was declared unfit for command by Italy’s top appeals court. In a written explanation of its decision to maintain his house arrest order, the Court of Cassation said he had shown “little resilience in performing command functions or in handling responsibility for the safety of persons under his care.”

Investigators accused Schettino of delaying evacuation and losing control of the operation, during which he abandoned ship before all 4,229 passengers and crew had been taken off the vessel. He has been charged with multiple manslaughter, causing the accident and abandoning ship prematurely.

Finally, concurrent with the latest salvage announcement on Friday, the Italian Maritime Investigative Body presented to the International Maritime Organisation in London the initial findings of its investigation into the Costa Concordia grounding and capsizing. The main problem, according to them, was that it took more than an hour after the ship hit the rocks for the emergency signal to be sounded

In the words of the Financial Times, “Elisa Giangrasso, an Italian coastguard officer, described to gasps from the audience how the vessel set a course to pass close to Giglio, strayed half a mile off course and then ran at speed into a shoal of rocks.”

Half a nautical mile is a little over three ship’s lengths, or perhaps a more revealingly, more than twenty-five ship’s breadths off course.

Kevin Griffin is managing director of The Cruise People Ltd in London, England. This article appeared in cybercruises.com

LiveJournal Tags: Francesco Schettino,Costa Concordia salvage

The Latest on Costa Concordia

Image via Wikipedia

by Kevin Griffin of our London office writing in cybercruises.com

As the general media have been covering the drama, we have not been commenting on the Costa Concordia tragedy. However, there are one or two pieces of news that we feel are worth commenting on. Firstly, should the elements allow, Costa has now announced that it intends to refloat the ship in one piece.
Others commenting have said that she is too big and will have to be cut up into sections. Ultimately, it will be the findings of the salvage company that will decide.

Ten salvage companies, Smit Salvage, Svitzer Salvage and Mammoet Salvage, all of the Netherlands, Titan Salvage, Resolve Marine Group, T&T Marine Salvage and Donjon Marine, all of the United states, Tito Neri of Italy and Fukada Salvage and Nippon Salvage of Japan, have been asked to tender on the wreck’s removal. Meanwhile, reports from US sources say that the ship’s insurers apparently favour Bisso Marine, a fifth-generation family business in New Orleans and Houston.

While Bisso was not even on the bid list it is always possible that it or its equipment might be subcontracted. Meanwhile, Smit Salvage is already on the scene as they were commissioned to remove the fuel from the wreck, about 40% of which has now been recovered. A final choice of salvage company is expected to be announced in March.

Should  Costa Concordia be righted and refloated intact, it seems that Costa have now given up any hope of placing her back in service again, indicating that in all likelihood she will be towed to a scrapyard. The damage to her port side is already evident, but that to her bottom and starboard side is as yet unknown.

Finally, according to Seatrade Insider and sources in Italy it appears that Costa Cruises bookings are down more than a third since the tragedy, as the line fights to protect the integrity of its brand. While other lines suffered lesser downturns, their bookings have started to rebound again after quick action by the cruise lines and public reassurances from the Cruise Lines International Association, the European Cruise Council and the UK’s Passenger Shipping Association.

The most important action has been that cruise lines have all now agreed to introduce mandatory safety drills before departure, something that exceeds International Maritime Organisation requirement that drills should be held within twenty-four hours of sailing.

LiveJournal Tags: Costa Concordia salvage

Plans for S.S. Keewatin Come Together

From Kevin Griffin in our London office

Photograph of s.s. Keewatin and dredging equipment at Douglas, Michigan, courtesy of Eric Conroy at the s.s. Keewatin Project

And now for a happier story than the recent Costa cruise ship tragedy and tales of a Shakespearian captain.  What you are looking at here is the 105-year-old former Canadian Pacific Great Lakes passenger ship Keewatin.  At 3,856 gross tons and with dimensions of 350 x 44 feet, she has just been rescued from an uncertain future to become the centrepiece of a new resort development at her old Georgian Bay home port of Port McNicoll, Ontario.

Keewatin is shown at Douglas, Michigan, near Saugatuck, where she has been used as a maritime museum for the past forty years and more. She has been shorn of her lifeboats in order to lighten ship for a scheduled June tow from Douglas to Port McNicoll. In the foreground is the dredging equipment that has been hired to cut the channel from Douglas that will free her. The Edwardian steamship had been lying in a bed of mud until last month, when she was finally floated again, and after inspection  is said to be in marvellous condition.

This dredging, which is being paid for by the ship’s new owners Skyline International Development Corporation, will also open up the dock at Douglas to small cruise ships such as Travel Dynamics’ 2,354-ton Yorktown, 257 x 43 feet, which is scheduled to call at nearby Saugatuck several times this year on her cruises between Detroit and Chicago. Yorktown has a passenger capacity of 138, compared to Keewatin‘s 280 when she was in service between 1908 and 1965.  For those wishing to cruise the Great Lakes in 2012,  Yorktown will be offering a total of thirteen 7, 10, 11 and 14-night cruises, with fares from $US3,995 for seven nights, including the cruise, all port charges, lectures, shore excursions and wine with lunch and dinner.

When she arrives at Port McNicoll, Keewatin, shown here during her last days of regular service between Georgian Bay and Lake Superior, will become a floating community centre and centrepiece for Port McNicoll’s renaissance. Plans are to build a resort hotel and condominiums and rebuild the old dockside railway station to its original plans. On board, Keewatin will also feature a museum on her main deck and a kind of market in her old main cargo deck, which in her last years was used to carry about forty cars. This will also be made available for community functions. Berthed very near to her old berth, from which she used to sail from every Wednesday for Sault Ste Marie, Port Arthur and Fort William (the last two now called Thunder Bay), the ship will become the centrepiece of what has until now been a sleepy Ontario town.

Just this month Skyline has also acquired a set of vintage railway rolling stock to become part of the scene. The port, with deep water, will naturally be seeking to attract a certain amount of cruise ship trade, and with an attraction such as Keewatin will be well equipped to do so.

For more information on either the S.S. Keewatin or how to book a Great Lakes cruise in Yorktown please contact The Cruise People, Ltd. in London on 020 7723 2450, in Toronto at 1-800-961-5536 or e-mail cruise@cruisepeople.co.uk or cruise@thecruisepeople.ca

del.icio.us Tags: Keewatin,Port McNicholl,Ossawippi dining cars

Costa Concordia: The Loss of a 114,147-ton Cruise Ship

Image via Wikipedia

by Kevin Griffin of our London office writing in cybercruises.com

At about 7 pm on Friday, the 13th of January, Costa Cruises’ 3,800-berth Costa Concordia departed from Civitavecchia, bound for her home port of Savona with 4,234 persons on board, including about 1,000 crew. Within a couple of hours, their cruise would be over.

Although the Italian Coast Guard said the first alarm was sounded at about 10:30 pm, passengers had reported that the ship had “grounded” during their dinner. An announcement was made of some sort of electrical or power failure, but in the end, for whatever reason, the ship struck rocks and ended up with a 160-foot gash on her port side below the waterline.

The Fincantieri-built, Registro Italiano Navale-classed Costa Concordia had a good record, having passed numerous port state control inspections with no deficiencies, except for one incident in 2008 when she sustained bow damage after hitting a berth at Palermo. So, rather than look at the ship’s evacuation and all its human interest stories, let’s have a look at just some of the other information that has come to light.

Automatic Information System Vessel Traffic records released by Turkish Maritime News web site Denizhaber.com show that the ship seems to have followed an unusual route. After leaving Civitavecchia she took the usual route and a course that would have taken her into deep water between the island of Giglio and the Tuscan mainland.

However, about 7 to 8 nautical miles from that channel she made a course alteration of about 20 degrees, turning to port, on a heading that would have brought her straight onto Giglio Island. She then apparently passed between two rocks to the east of Giglio. The Turkish site thus asks why such a large ship would pass between two rocks when she could have been in deeper water. Why was the ship there and was it due to a mechanical failure?

There was also some question about the ship having been on autopilot not long after having left Civitavecchia, when manual control might have been more appropriate that close to land. Whatever the case, those positions and courses have all been recorded and the ship’s black box has been recovered so all of this will become part of the enquiry.

Meanwhile, from Marine Traffic we have the following:

20:21 – 15.7 knots, heading 278 – the course that led straight to Giglio
20:29 – 15.4 knots, heading 278
20:33 – 15.4 knots, heading 276
20:37 – 15.3 knots, heading 285 – start of a turn away from the island, now ±1 mile ahead?
20:53 – 2.9 knots, heading 351 – now less than 500m from the shore
20:58 – 1.4 knots, heading 007
21:01 – 1.1 knots, heading 013
The change of course and drop in speed between 20:37 and 20:53 would seen to identify the moments of crisis.

After she was holed, the ship developed a list of about 20 degrees to starboard but she would ultimately capsize before morning. Passengers reported panic on the vessel but fortunately she was in shallow water and as well as those that got away in the lifeboats, which were difficult to launch because of the vessel’s list, a number were able to swim the short distance to the island of Giglio.

It was among those jumping into the water that the first three casualties were reported, however. And because of the 20 degree list, not all the lifeboats could be launched, so others had to be rescued by helicopter.

A major point in the investigation that will follow will undoubtedly be the survivability of the ship, particularly her stability. How quickly she lost stability and why she settled away from the damage to the hull will be areas for investigation.

There are many questions to be answered. Why was she three or four nautical miles off course in the first place? Why did she hit a rock or rocks that caused such critical damage to her hull? Why did she settle on the side opposite the damage?

Costa generally has a good safety record, having lost two ships in the past fifty years. In 1961,  Bianca C burned and sank at Grenada and in 1984 Columbus C sank in the port of Cadiz after ramming the breakwater there. As these losses occurred before Costa became part of Carnival Corporation, it is only Carnival’s second ship loss after the sail-assisted cruise ship Wind Song was abandoned in French Polynesia in 2002 after an engine room fire, in that case without loss of life.

One other question that arises, and this does not apply just to Costa is why emergency drills are only required “within twenty-four hours of sailing” instead of before sailing. Is this some sort of loophole for ferries? Huge cruise ships carrying 4,000 souls are not ferries and there will probably be a change here as well, especially in view of the confusion that seems to have existed on board Costa Concordia. This cruise had three embarkation ports, at Savona, Marseilles and Civitavecchia, and I am pretty willing to bet that passengers boarding at each of these port will be drilled before dinner in future.

It was also the second grounding in a week for an Italian operator, as MSC Poesia went aground off Grand Bahama Island on January 8, but was freed by four tugs shortly thereafter.

Meanwhile police in Porto Santo Stefano detained the Costa Concordia’s Captain Francesco Schettino and first officer Ciro Ambrosio on Saturday. Although the captain maintains he was the last to leave the ship, Italian media reports have said he was ashore around 11:40 pm on Friday while the last passengers were not evacuated until 6 am on Saturday. Prosecutors are said to be investigating possible charges of multiple manslaughter and abandoning ship while passengers were still in danger.

Costa Cruises issued an official statement last night, which said in part“While the investigation is ongoing, preliminary indications are that there may have been significant human error on the part of the ship’s Master, Captain Francesco Schettino, which resulted in these grave consequences.”

LiveJournal Tags: Costa Concordia