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Some 1,200 passengers aboard the Clipper Pacific are enjoying an unexpected extended stay in NYC, while the cruise ship is being detained by Coast Guard for multiple safety issues in New York Harbor.

The 637-foot ship, en route from Greenland to Venezuela, was boarded by Coast Guard Sunday morning for a routine safety inspection, only to reveal significant hull damage and numerous other discrepancies.  Newsday.com reports:

The inspection of the Clipper Pacific, which began on Sunday and ended Tuesday, found that the ship’s hull was leaking, the Coast Guard said. The inspection found 66 safety problems on the ship, including damage to the lifeboats and life jacket issues.

A commercial diving company has made temporary repairs to the hull, but the Coast Guard ordered the 637-foot ship to remain in the harbor until further repairs were made.

Luckily for the passengers, they are able to come and go as they please while the repairs are being made.

UPDATE:

The NYTimes tells us:

The Coast Guard held the ship at Pier 92 on the West Side until most of the safety problems had been fixed.

After the ship’s operators agreed to have the hull repaired in dry dock in Tampa, the Coast Guard cleared it to leave, said the spokeswoman, Petty Officer Third Class Barbara Patton. The ship, which is affiliated with Peace Boat, a nonprofit group in Japan, had come from Greenland and was bound for Venezuela after a scheduled stop in New York.

“There was significant damage to the hull,” she said. “They need to go into dry dock, and their dock of choice was down in Tampa.” Continue Reading…

Popular Mechanics updates us on the the World’s Fastest Ship, or at least the vessel currently holding the transatlantic speed record the mighty SS United States. They write:

Though I didn’t know it then, at age 4, that wake, sharp and narrow, was a clue to what made the SS United States one of the greatest—if not the greatest—ocean liners of the 20th century. To cut such a trail in the water a ship has to be fast, and there was no ocean liner faster than the one known to enthusiasts as the “Big U.” Although four city blocks long and 17 stories high, the United States could slice through water at 44 knots, or more than 50 mph—14 knots faster than today’s largest cruise ship, the Queen Mary 2. During her maiden voyage in 1952, the ship set records on both the east and westbound crossings; the latter, three days, 12 hours and 12 minutes at an average speed of 34.5 knots, has never been broken.

Continue reading…

Considering the recent lose of the SS Independence, we certainly hope she can be saved.

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You can do your part to help save this ship HERE.

The Juneau Empire is reporting:

A cruise ship scraped the bottom of the Tracy Arm fjord Wednesday morning, forcing its crew to cut short its trip and call the U.S. Coast Guard for assistance.

The Spirit of Alaska called the Coast Guard around 8 a.m. Wednesday, Coast Guard Petty Officer Levi Read said.

The boat is owned by Seattle-based Cruise West, which says on its Web site that the 143-foot boat has a “shallow draft” that makes for “optimum wildlife viewing.”

There were 41 passengers on board and 22 crew members, Read said. He said there were no reported injuries.

After hitting bottom, the boat anchored and waited for an inspector from the Coast Guard and a commercial diver to survey the damage to the boat, Read said.

He said the Coast Guard had dispatched two boats and a helicopter to assist the boat. A tugboat was scheduled to pull the Spirit of Alaska back to Juneau on Wednesday evening, according to the Coast Guard.

A spokesman for Cruise West said Wednesday afternoon that the Spirit of Alaska was on the second day of a seven-day trip that was to start and end in Juneau.

The complete Juneau Empire post is here.

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This post was written by Richard Rodriguez, Rescue Tug Captain, and US Coast Guard approved instructor for License Training. You can read more of his articles at the BitterEnd of the net.

The US-owned cruise operator, Regent Seven Seas, is taken bids on a brand new ultra-luxury cruises ship. The vessel will have a projected capacity of 800 guest as well as an entire deck devoted to an on-board spa. At the moment Regent Seven Seas operate four small to mid-size luxury cruise ships.

travelweekly.co.uk brings us more on this new ship build.

President Mark Conroy said three shipyards are bidding for the business and a decision is expected by September with delivery slated for 2011 or 2012.

The vessel will be an all-balcony, all-suite vessel, like Regent’s flagships Seven Seas Mariner and Seven Seas Voyager, but hold about 800 passengers, which is 100 more than those two ships.

Standard cabins will be slightly larger than on Mariner and Voyager - 400 square feet instead of 350 - and it will have more restaurants and probably an entire deck devoted to the spa.

Yesterday the passengers of the cruise ship Norwegian Spirit were, as the Daily News headline reads, “Cruising For A Bruising”, yesterday as the ship allided with New York City’s Pier 88. Click HERE for details.

The BBC tells us:

Latvian authorities have begun evacuating hundreds of people from a cruise ship stuck on a sandbank.

So far tugs have failed to free the Bahamas-registered Mona Lisa, which ran aground off Latvia on Sunday with nearly 1,000 people on board.

Officials say there is no danger to the passengers, most of whom are German.

The ship set sail from the German port of Kiel on 1 May for a 10-day Baltic cruise. It had been en route to Riga in Latvia when it hit a sandbank.

A total of 984 people are on board - 651 of them passengers, mostly elderly German tourists. Not all of the crew are being evacuated.

It is not yet clear how the 30,000-tonne liner came to run aground some 18 km (11 miles) off the Latvian coast in normal weather conditions. Read More…

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Via, The London Daily Mail.

The world’s biggest cruise liner is to have a New York-style “Central Park” on the ship, its owners have revealed.

Royal Caribbean is building the 220,000-tonne liner with the working name Project Genesis and the announcement is the latest salvo in the intensely competitive global cruise market.

The company said the park would be “a revolutionary design in which the center of the ship opens to the sky and features lush, tropical grounds spanning the length of a football field”.

New York style: The liner will have an outdoor area on-board supposedly modeled on Central Park.

The 1,180ft long luxury liner is under construction in Finland at a cost of £700 million and dwarfs the current biggest ships - also owned by Royal Caribbean - which are 160,000 tonnes.

The builders said the space will be like a town square for al fresco dining and entertainment. The park will be located on Deck 8 of the 16 deck ship and open to the sky, with dimensions of 62ft (19m) wide and 328ft (100m) long. Trees in the park will tower more than two-and-a-half decks tall and the area is to have micro-climate control techniques to make sure the plants thrive.

World’s biggest: The 220,000-tonne cruise liner is being built by Royal Caribbean in Finland.

[Continue Reading →]

An engine room fire at 12:31 this morning forced an evacuation of Queen of the West.

From a Coast Guard Media Release:

SEATTLE - The Coast Guard, state and local authorities have offloaded the passengers and non-essential personnel from the Majestic Cruise Line passenger vessel, Queen of The West, after it suffered an engine fire earlier this morning.

The Queen of The West was beached in a controlled manner in the vicinity of Maryhill State Park, where the passengers were offloaded safely over the vessel’s bow ramp.

The 124 passengers were transported by bus to Skamania Lodge, Ore.

One crewmember became wet while fighting the fire, and was taken to a local hospital after exhibiting signs of hypothermia. Three of the crewmembers were checked and released on scene for smoke inhalation.

The vessel owner plans to tow the Queen of The West to the Port of Klickitat, Wash., just upstream of The Dalles Dam, with a crew of 26 essential personnel. There they will prepare the vessel for a further tow to Sundial Marine in Troutdale, Ore., for repairs.

Klickitat County emergency services personnel managed the disembarkation and processing of passengers.

The Washington Department of Ecology organized precautionary shoreline protection operations along the river to address the risk of any oil pollution from the disabled vessel.

The cause of the engine room fire is under investigation.

Cruise Critic tells us:

The fire was noticed last night around midnight and the Coast Guard was notified. The incident occurred while the boat was sailing between The Dalles and John Day Locks (map); the boat was towed to Maryhill where the passengers were safely evacuated at around 5 a.m. Three crewmembers were treated and released for smoke inhalation by paramedics on the scene.

Queen of the West is undergoing assessment at this time to determine what caused the fire. Passengers were transported to local hotels; the remainder of the cruise has been canceled and they are being assisted in their travel arrangements by Majestic America Line staff.

A Seattle Times article is here.

Coast Guard audio, of this morning’s call from the John Day Dam control room.

One Passenger’s account of the incident.

Ed. note: It was Majestic America’s Empress of the North that grounded less than a year ago in Alaska. The gCaptain post is here:Empress Of The North while our Majestic Line posts are here: Majestic Cruise Line.

No this isn’t going to be a post about china’s new submarines…. instead we look at designing ships to be quite for more relaxing purposes.

Eurodam News, Holland America’s newbuild blog, shares the secret;

When Zuiderdam, the first Vista-class ship, entered service, it quickly became evident that the aft part of the main restaurant had higher-than-usual noise and vibration levels. On all Holland America ships the aft section of the main restaurant is located above the propellers, but on Vista-class ships the main restaurant was located three decks lower and therefore is closer to the propellers.

Fincantieri engaged Danish consulting company Odegaard & Danneskiold-Samsoe to work with the shipyard’s noise and vibration department to develop a solution. They hit on the idea of installing an air-injection system that would create a cushion of air bubbles between the propellers and the hull to absorb some of the noise frequencies that would otherwise be transferred directly to the hull. A similar system had been installed on private yachts before, but the technology had never been tried on a large cruise vessel.

For the rest of the article click HERE.

This article was originally posted in October 2007

CDR Salamander features China’s largest FPSO on Ugly Ship Thursday. He writes;

A ship only a Captain could love. I don’t think anyone will be making those cool mahogany models of it anytime soon, but I ask you to BEHOLD and up close and personal shot of the 300,000 DWT $230 million Hai Yang Shi You 117, China’s biggest floating production, storage and offloading vessel.

Our Ugly Ship pick is the Norwegian Gem, as photographed by the Lisbon Cruise Bog:

The Fairmont Summit is not much prettier but it is a working ship.

Can you believe an FPSO can actually be beautiful or that people actually pay to board the Norwegian Gem? Shocking, we know.