never seen this before...

[Cruise_Couple]

I was watching the Fort Lauderdale webcam last night and noticed the Legend of the Seas was over an hour late departing and they were loading stuff by using the bow deck mounted crane. I was very surprised to see the crane in use as I never have before. I always thought they just rolled everything on from the sides. They were obviously moving very fast to finish and the bridge crew was standing on the wing waiting. The crane moved the last pallet on and they were dropping the mooring lines almost immediately. Does anyone know if this is normal to use the cranes on the bow (I am not sure if the newer ships even have them)? Like I said... I have never seen this done before and am curious.

[NorbertsNiece]

On Freedom last year we were unable to access the helipad for sailaway as it was in use for loading by crane right up to the moment of departure.....

Edited April 17, 2014 by NorbertsNiece

[setsail]

Used for many things, lots has a spare anchor there also, I would guess it could only be put in place with the use of the crane

[LMaxwell]

The onboard crane was used on our Legend cruise to deploy and retrieve the gangway.

[TBone2K]

I suppose it also depends on where they needed to put the stuff they were picking up with the crane. May have been late leaving because they were waiting for whatever it was to be delivered.

[grab007]

It depends what is was they were loading. If they needed a crane, it was to put whatever it was close to where it was needed. For example I once saw them use a deck crane to load a pallet of new pool deck chairs.

[Darkwolfe]

What was curious to me was that she was docked over where Oasis and Allure are typically docked. Now I'm curious to see if Vision will be docked there this summer instead of Pier 4.