Last month, the largest cruise ever built, Oasis of the Seas, underwent it’s first set of sea trials in the North Sea and Chairman and CEO of Royal Carribean, Richard Fain was there to blog about it. He writes:
Hull Number 1363 (soon to be known as Oasis of the Seas) has just completed her sea trials and is now back at her berth in Turku. Most of the trials were a terrific success. The ship performed her various tests very well and everyone is very excited.
While the trials were a “terrific success”, they did suffer one hiccup; the failure of a ‘tethered blimp’ ride. Fain continues:
BUT, we had one nasty surprise early this morning. I previously mentioned that we were thinking of adding an aerostat to the ship and were doing a test to see if it was practical/desirable. It required a lot of temporary rigging but they managed to put a test balloon on the ship.
Then this morning, something happened and the balloon broke free. It ended up in the water and we are now taking steps to recover it and determine what happened.
It is interesting to read as Royal Carribean gets set to commission this massive cruise ship and I would suggest checking out Richard Fain’s blog HERE. For now, Hull Number 1363 is back at STX Europe’s Turku shipyard awaiting completion.
Updated: May 2, 2011 (Originally published July 7, 2009)
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