AIDAmar Engines Installed

AIDAmar, the next ship under construction for Carnival Corp's AIDA brand, is ten months away from delivery by Meyer Werft. Last week the ship's four giant engines arrived by boat at the Papenburg yard. AIDAmar, at this point doesn't look much like a ship, but a crane lifted them into place where they will go in the hull, and the ship will be built around them.

This video from AIDA shows the installation process which took only six hours.



Each of the 127-ton engines has nine cylinders and will generate 1,000 kilowatts of power that will be used for propulsion and electricity aboard the ship.

AIDAmar is scheduled to enter service on May 12, 2012.

Carnival to Open New Facility on Grand Turk

Carnival Corp began construction of a new Welcome Center in Cockburn Town on Grand Turk to complement the Grand Turk Cruise Center which they opened in 2006 and is responsible for bringing nearly 640,000 passengers to the island annually.

The new Welcome Center is designed to draw people into town (from the Cruise Center). The complex, located at the southeast corner of Front and Market streets, will include a tourist information office, restaurant/lounge, and shopping.

Shown in the artist's renderings below, its architectural style is patterned after the area's existing architecture.






The new complex is slated to open by the end of 2011.

Medevac from Carnival Dream

A 49-year-old woman was medevaced from Carnival Dream this morning as the ship was returning to Port Canaveral from St. Maarten. The US Coast Guard says they got the call when the ship was 80 miles north of Cat Island in the Bahamas. It was handled by an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew from Clearwater (Florida) that was operating out of a base in the Bahamas. They met the ship and hoisted the woman from Carnival Dream’s aft deck in what they consider a routine operation. In the photo above, it looks like most of the passengers turned out to watch the delicate ballet between the moving ship and helicopter flying overhead which the Coast Guard considers "routine." The photo shows the patient being hoisted to the helicopter just below the door. (Passengers were kept a safe distance away in the ship's central pool area.) The photo was taken by a CND reader who is a passenger aboard the ship. It makes you realize what an extraordinary job the men and women of the Coast Guard do every day, but pass it off as "routine."

Video: Celebrity Silhouette Completes Ems Transit to the Sea

Yesterday Celebrity Silhouette departed the Meyer shipyard on its conveyance down the Ems River to the Sea. This video shows the first part of the difficult and complicated trip. The ship sails slowly backward - stern first for safer maneuverability - down the river choreographed with the tide and the winds. In preparation for the trip power and railroad tracks that cross the river have been removed. In the video, you get a perspective on just how little clearance the ship has as it passes through the locks.



Sometimes seeing behind the scenes is even more enlightening, as you'll see in this raw video taken during the first part of the transit.



This amateur video (below) taken near Leer gives a better impression of what the process is along the 26-mile route as the ship travels down the river - slow, and again how little clearance there is as it passes through the various locks and bridges.

Miami Shows Its Excitement about Carnival Breeze

The Port of Miami is excited by the recent announcement that Carnival Breeze will be homeporting there beginning in November 2012. Most new ships in recent years have been bypassing the port, once considered the cruise capital of the world, and homeporting a few miles to the north at Port Everglades or elsewhere in the country considering the stiff competition for ships. Even though Carnival Breeze won’t arrive in Miami for more than a year, the port has erected a massive 3,000-square-foot billboard welcoming the ship to Miami. It can be seen on I-395 which connects Miami and Miami Beach - or here on the CND blog below: