Caribbean Princess Drydock?

[cltnccruisers]

11 hours ago, stevenr597 said:

I heard rumor, just rumors, that they are having problems with the engines.

Wonder why they didn't put it in dry-dock in the Caribbean, I believe that they have done this in the past. 

If they feel they don't need to do it in the Caribbean maybe it's not a huge problem.  Maybe they change the oil and/or tune the engines so to speak.

[azbirdmom]

On 8/23/2021 at 6:46 PM, ceilidh1 said:

I'm hoping for the best, but fearing the worst...I've lost track of how many cancellations I have under my belt right now. On the "hopeful" side, my Crown sailing is a few days before the drydock is meant to end so IF they are done early then it might still be a go? Nice, shiny, new ship smell? On the negative side, I sailed a ship right out of drydock before and they were still working on stuff during our sailing....and it wasn't pleasant! Lol.

 

Well they cancelled the cruises on the Diamond this morning so your source is 2 for 3 so far on the drydock list.  Can only guess that you'll be hearing about changes on the Crown soon.

[ceilidh1]

1 hour ago, azbirdmom said:

 

Well they cancelled the cruises on the Diamond this morning so your source is 2 for 3 so far on the drydock list.  Can only guess that you'll be hearing about changes on the Crown soon.

Well that blows......

[chengkp75]

On 8/10/2021 at 2:01 AM, Bgwest said:

Do we yet know the reason/reasons for the drydock?

 

Surely this can't be routine maintenance, can it? 

Yep, it certainly is.  Caribbean Princess is now 17 years old.  After the 15 year mark, the ship has to be drydocked "twice in 5 years", or every 2.5 years.  Coming into service in 2004, put her 15 year drydock in 2019, so 2021 is the right time frame for the intermediate drydock.  Drydockings are statutory requirements, not for facelifts to the hotel.

 

Grand Bahamas shipyard only has one dock suitable for a ship the size of Caribbean Princess, since the #2 dock is still under repair.  This most likely led to the decision to go to Portland for shipyard.

 

Yes, this is a maintenance drydocking, which actually all of them are, since renovations to the hotel can be done anywhere, with the ship afloat.

 

I haven't followed the thread real close, but I understand there is an 8 week time frame?  So, two weeks there, two weeks back, and 3-4 weeks in shipyard.  Given the age, they may expect some steel renewal (after 15 years, the surveys during shipyard get much more intensive, and extensive, especially looking for steel wastage).

[AmazedByCruising]

19 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

After the 15 year mark, the ship has to be drydocked "twice in 5 years", or every 2.5 years.

 

While this is the "standard", who made these rules? 8 weeks without drinking and art buying pax makes a serious dent in revenue. I can imagine an insurance company that is completely fine with delaying the 2.5 year schedule until the ship is 30 years old, if that extra risk is compensated with some extra inspections done by divers, tougher or thicker steel, an extra psychological test to see how likely it is the Captain would run his ship into the ground to show off, more firedoors, a limit to weather conditions above which the ship won't sail, you name it, or simply a higher premium.

[chengkp75]

22 minutes ago, AmazedByCruising said:

 

While this is the "standard", who made these rules? 8 weeks without drinking and art buying pax makes a serious dent in revenue. I can imagine an insurance company that is completely fine with delaying the 2.5 year schedule until the ship is 30 years old, if that extra risk is compensated with some extra inspections done by divers, tougher or thicker steel, an extra psychological test to see how likely it is the Captain would run his ship into the ground to show off, more firedoors, a limit to weather conditions above which the ship won't sail, you name it, or simply a higher premium.

Who makes the rules?  The classification society, that underwrites the ship.  Both the flag state, and the various insurance clubs (hull, P&I, etc) determine which classification societies meet their requirements, and therefore to fly that nation's flag, or to be a member of the insurance club (most are mutual associations), you have to be classed by that society, and therefore, meet their rules.  As the flag state is involved, this becomes statutory.  

 

This is not some random number picked out of thin air, but is based on statistical data and review of ship surveys and casualties over many decades.  It has been found that diver inspections can no longer find the flaws that affect older ships the way that out of water visual and ultrasonic and radiographic testing of steel thicknesses and welds can.

 

Even if you were to use "tougher or thicker steel", that exceeded the class societies requirements, you most likely would not get any leeway in inspection interval, since there would be no data set to base inspection criteria on.  Just look at azipods.  They were designed for a 5 year overhaul interval, and historical data on smaller units suggested they could, but history has shown that they don't always make it that long (especially the bigger ones), so pro-active owners like RCI will dock their Oasis class ships every 2.5 years anyway, to pre-empt a potential failure.  Other lines, like HAL, have always done drydocks every 2.5 years, not 5, as preventative measures.

 

As the insurance is mutual, meaning the shipowners are insuring themselves, they want to minimize risk as much as possible.

 

And, its not like this suddenly came upon Princess that they would have to drydock the ship.  They either chose to defer a docking while the ship was idle, or did not want to schedule a docking for a time when the ship might still be idle, or just merely wanted to kick the can down the road, there is no excuse for a "last minute" statutory docking.  And, that is what has caused the loss of revenue.

 

All you need to do is search for M/V Crimson Polaris.

[Bgwest]

41 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

Who makes the rules?  The classification society, that underwrites the ship.  Both the flag state, and the various insurance clubs (hull, P&I, etc) determine which classification societies meet their requirements, and therefore to fly that nation's flag, or to be a member of the insurance club (most are mutual associations), you have to be classed by that society, and therefore, meet their rules.  As the flag state is involved, this becomes statutory.  

 

This is not some random number picked out of thin air, but is based on statistical data and review of ship surveys and casualties over many decades.  It has been found that diver inspections can no longer find the flaws that affect older ships the way that out of water visual and ultrasonic and radiographic testing of steel thicknesses and welds can.

 

Even if you were to use "tougher or thicker steel", that exceeded the class societies requirements, you most likely would not get any leeway in inspection interval, since there would be no data set to base inspection criteria on.  Just look at azipods.  They were designed for a 5 year overhaul interval, and historical data on smaller units suggested they could, but history has shown that they don't always make it that long (especially the bigger ones), so pro-active owners like RCI will dock their Oasis class ships every 2.5 years anyway, to pre-empt a potential failure.  Other lines, like HAL, have always done drydocks every 2.5 years, not 5, as preventative measures.

 

As the insurance is mutual, meaning the shipowners are insuring themselves, they want to minimize risk as much as possible.

 

And, its not like this suddenly came upon Princess that they would have to drydock the ship.  They either chose to defer a docking while the ship was idle, or did not want to schedule a docking for a time when the ship might still be idle, or just merely wanted to kick the can down the road, there is no excuse for a "last minute" statutory docking.  And, that is what has caused the loss of revenue.

 

All you need to do is search for M/V Crimson Polaris.

Chief, continue to be SO thankful you are here and willing to continue your insightful and technically accurate input to the conversations. 
 

I suppose there will always be the continual blathering by the “engineering wannabes” but as long as you are here and willing to provide the straight scoop on things, we can deal with and tune out the wannabes. 

[stevenr597]

Yes there are rules or guidelines that all the major cruise lines try to follow.  However, when any allowance made that for well over one year, all of these ships were not being operated, and in fact had plenty of time to take care of any necessary repairs.

In addition, if Princess realized that a scheduled dry dock was in order, why did they book cruises only to have to cancel them.

It does appear that some unforeseen problem has occurred with the ship that has necessitated Princess having to sail from the East to the West Coast and put the ship in dry dock causing cruise cancellations.  

[chengkp75]

1 hour ago, stevenr597 said:

Yes there are rules or guidelines that all the major cruise lines try to follow.  However, when any allowance made that for well over one year, all of these ships were not being operated, and in fact had plenty of time to take care of any necessary repairs.

In addition, if Princess realized that a scheduled dry dock was in order, why did they book cruises only to have to cancel them.

It does appear that some unforeseen problem has occurred with the ship that has necessitated Princess having to sail from the East to the West Coast and put the ship in dry dock causing cruise cancellations.  

I will disagree.  You don't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars when you don't have any revenue coming in, so most of the lines deferred drydockings during the shutdown.  While Princess would know that a drydocking was due, they may have felt they were entitled to a grace period due to the shutdown, which is not the case (unless you actually "suspend" the ship's documents), and as Carnival Corp is a major owner of Grand Bahamas Shipyard, perhaps they felt they could get in there preferentially.  Hard to say, but given that this is within the statutory drydock time window, I don't believe there is an "unforeseen problem" with the ship.  I know that there has been some shuffling of deployments, and that "operations" (the ones that set the cruises) don't always talk with "technical" (the ones who deal with the shipyards), so it may have been that the Caribbean was set for return to operation without fully understanding the required technical inspections.

 

However, the "rules" are not "guidelines", and the cruise lines don't "try" to follow them, if they don't follow them, their documents are pulled, and the ship can't sail.  And, just because a ship is out of service, you can't say "hey, let's do the drydock early" because there is a set window of a couple of months either way from the required date, and any docking done outside this window essentially doesn't count.

[nocl]

45 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

I will disagree.  You don't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars when you don't have any revenue coming in, so most of the lines deferred drydockings during the shutdown.  While Princess would know that a drydocking was due, they may have felt they were entitled to a grace period due to the shutdown, which is not the case (unless you actually "suspend" the ship's documents), and as Carnival Corp is a major owner of Grand Bahamas Shipyard, perhaps they felt they could get in there preferentially.  Hard to say, but given that this is within the statutory drydock time window, I don't believe there is an "unforeseen problem" with the ship.  I know that there has been some shuffling of deployments, and that "operations" (the ones that set the cruises) don't always talk with "technical" (the ones who deal with the shipyards), so it may have been that the Caribbean was set for return to operation without fully understanding the required technical inspections.

 

However, the "rules" are not "guidelines", and the cruise lines don't "try" to follow them, if they don't follow them, their documents are pulled, and the ship can't sail.  And, just because a ship is out of service, you can't say "hey, let's do the drydock early" because there is a set window of a couple of months either way from the required date, and any docking done outside this window essentially doesn't count.

In addition I would expect that it may not have been easy to get dry docks done during the shutdown with labor impacts in the dry dock facilities, impacts on supply chains, etc.

[chengkp75]

1 hour ago, nocl said:

In addition I would expect that it may not have been easy to get dry docks done during the shutdown with labor impacts in the dry dock facilities, impacts on supply chains, etc.

Yes, and no.  I drydocked a ship in Grand Bahamas last November.  Certain countries were affected more than others.

[ronrythm]

And to those who say the ship wasn’t used for over a year, the steel was still aging and it was still exposed to the stresses of being on the ocean. It still needs to be inspected.

enjoy

Ron

[ALWAYS CRUZIN]

If all of this was previously known by Princess (Carnival) Why did they book it in the first place and mess up everyone's plans? They had plenty of time to schedule and not take reservations.

[Tak8]

I have the first Caribbean Princess sailing after drydock.  With so many cancellations the past year plus, I do have a little concern for that cruise.  No insider knowledge here just a concerned passenger who has lost 3 cruises so far.

[cruisingpeople]

8 minutes ago, Tak8 said:

I have the first Caribbean Princess sailing after drydock.  With so many cancellations the past year plus, I do have a little concern for that cruise.  No insider knowledge here just a concerned passenger who has lost 3 cruises so far.

 

Are you talking about the first cruise from FLL or the one from the West Coast through the Panama Canal after dry dock??

[Tak8]

I'm on the first one from Florida 

[AmazedByCruising]

Once again I want to thank you for the explanation. And can't help to continue asking more questions :)

 

On 8/26/2021 at 8:09 PM, chengkp75 said:

The classification society, that underwrites the ship.  Both the flag state, and the various insurance clubs (hull, P&I, etc) determine which classification societies meet their requirements, and therefore to fly that nation's flag, or to be a member of the insurance club (most are mutual associations),

 

If I'm correct, it's not the classification society that actually underwrites the ship. They are the auditors, they officialy put checkmarks on a list. If they say the anchor is OK when there is no anchor they're out of business. The ship owner, who's paying for their services, might say that the ship doesn't need an anchor because the ship doesn't sail and is only used as a hotel. 

 

If the auditor does insist on a useless anchor, there's another classification society because there are more than one. 

 

On 8/26/2021 at 8:09 PM, chengkp75 said:

Even if you were to use "tougher or thicker steel", that exceeded the class societies requirements, you most likely would not get any leeway in inspection interval, since there would be no data set to base inspection criteria on.

 

On 8/26/2021 at 8:09 PM, chengkp75 said:

 

As the insurance is mutual, meaning the shipowners are insuring themselves, they want to minimize risk as much as possible.

 

 

That is a bit old fashioned, isn't it? Farmers would insure mutually for their haystacks in 1820. In 2021, a bar owner doesn't insure against fire by making a deal with other bar owners, they'd call their insurance company. And that company doesn't sell beer but has specialized at odds. They bet that your bar doesn't get burned down, and the bar owner bets that it does so if it burns down he's still OK.

 

The insurance companies don't ask for minimizing the risk as much as possible, but they do like some measures. Insuring against burglary is cheaper with proper locks and an alarm system, but if you have someone patrolling 24/7 you don't need the insurance company. 

 

So, I wonder why each and everyone says that 2.5 years is just perfect after exactly 15 years. You mention azipods but I think that history shows other problems. Failing azipods may lead to OBC for a missed port, but not a disaster that a multi-billion company should insure. Not sure if Carnival insures their ships, but if they do I wouldn't know why.

 

Recent things (for cruiseships) are bad weather combined with a failure to make sure there's enough oil in the engines. A Captain gone mad. A bit earlier: the ice berg. If I were the insurance company, or if the insurance was organized like a crowd funding thing (just like Lloyds started), I'd want to know how experts "feel" about a ship. Does it look clean, is the crew happy, would crew use a magic pipe, what kind of messages are put on the door in the engine room, does the Captain say hello to the guy that cleans plates in an elevator. If it's all neat and tidy, I'd bet that it won't sink and would put some money on the line that says it won't. 

 

Obviously, it's easier to have rules like a dry dock every 2.5 years, and have it checked by some auditor, but as there's so much money involved I'd expect a much more refined system. The real problems seem to be a failure to follow procedures and mad captains, not a rusting part of the ship that nobody noticed and the line didn't care to look at.

 

 

[chengkp75]

7 hours ago, AmazedByCruising said:

If I'm correct, it's not the classification society that actually underwrites the ship.

You are correct.  The classification societies operate like "UL", Underwriters Laboratories, that test products and certifies they are safe.  I believe that TUV is similar in Germany.  Classification societies have a dual function, both statutory and commercial.  Statutory in that flag states will determine that all ships flying their flag must meet the requirements of one or more recognized societies, and commercial, since they are hired by the shipowner to provide a certificate that allows the shipowner to obtain insurance.

 

7 hours ago, AmazedByCruising said:

Obviously, it's easier to have rules like a dry dock every 2.5 years, and have it checked by some auditor, but as there's so much money involved I'd expect a much more refined system. The real problems seem to be a failure to follow procedures and mad captains, not a rusting part of the ship that nobody noticed and the line didn't care to look at.

7 hours ago, AmazedByCruising said:

That is a bit old fashioned, isn't it? Farmers would insure mutually for their haystacks in 1820. In 2021, a bar owner doesn't insure against fire by making a deal with other bar owners, they'd call their insurance company. And that company doesn't sell beer but has specialized at odds. They bet that your bar doesn't get burned down, and the bar owner bets that it does so if it burns down he's still OK.

Sure, you could have an insurance company that would insure ships.  But, given the risks involved, the rates would be usurious.  This is why shipowners have used mutual insurance clubs to insure their ships since 1885.  Yes, the insurance company knows the odds, and sets premiums accordingly, so if they could do it cheaper than self-insurance, don't you think the shipowners would have gone that route?

 

7 hours ago, AmazedByCruising said:

So, I wonder why each and everyone says that 2.5 years is just perfect after exactly 15 years. You mention azipods but I think that history shows other problems. Failing azipods may lead to OBC for a missed port, but not a disaster that a multi-billion company should insure. Not sure if Carnival insures their ships, but if they do I wouldn't know why.

What you are talking about is "interruption of business" insurance, and that is certainly one part of the insurance cover that ships must have, and in fact, much of that is not done by mutual companies, but is handled by commercial insurance companies, with a lot of re-insurance to spread the risk.

 

A failure of an azipod could very well lead to a disaster that could lead to billions in claims.  First, there is the hull insurance, covering the replacement of the ship, much like your car insurance.  Let's investigate your "Captain gone mad" or "iceberg", or even touching a rock offshore an Italian island.  In a restricted waterway, or in traffic, loss of an azipod could lead to a collision or allision, and either significant damage to the vessel, or its complete loss.

 

Then there is P&I insurance (protection & indemnity).  This provides coverage against all liability for damages caused by the vessel, to third parties.  I.e., in the example above, any injuries to passengers on the ship that collided, any claims for lost vacation by those passengers, damages to the other vessel, or to a shore facility (say a bridge the ship ran into), injuries to people on the other vessel or on the facility, lost revenue by third parties because the bridge is no longer available for that party to ship goods over, and damages to the environment caused by the incident.  The possible claims for these kinds of damages is almost limitless, and to provide coverage for this would be cost prohibitive.  Even in the Costa Concordia incident, even the P&I club had a limit on liability, and above that Carnival Corp was on the hook by themselves.

 

Apologies, my cutting and pasting went awry.  What more "refined system" would you propose?  Statistics say that after a certain time, ships start to deteriorate, and so slightly ahead of that time, we need to start more diligent inspections.  You seem hung up on "mad Captains", but even there, the classification societies set the standards for the ISM code the company adopts (the ISM code requires that a company writes down all of their policies and procedures, and then follows those policies and procedures, such as steering too close to shore), and the class societies audits not only the corporate headquarters of the shipowner, but each ship every year to ensure the ship is following the industry best practices in their operations.  And, as for your "rusting bit" that no one cared to look at, again I say "Crimson Polaris" or "MV Wakashio" or "MV Prestige".  None of these had anything to do with a "mad Captain", but instead a structural flaw or deterioration of the vessel.

[chengkp75]

I'll add one more probably long post to Amazed, and then let this drop, as extraneous to the topic.

 

The class societies are involved in nearly every single aspect of a ship, more so I think than in any other industry.  A simple, small tanker like the one I'm on now, has two 4" ring binders full of the certificates that class issues for our ship, covering every aspect, and many are renewed on an annual basis.  The surveyors attend the ship at least annually, to survey and renew certificates, and more often if the company wishes to.

 

Ship design:  From the drawing board, the ship must meet class requirements for structural strengh and reliability, structural fire protection, safety of life, equipment standards and redundancy, and other items, and then are surveyed annually to ensure the ship continues throughout its life to meet these requirements.

 

Ship construction:  The ship is surveyed during construction to ensure that proper construction techniques are followed, and to ensure quality control of those processes.

 

Ship operation:  The society issues certificates showing that the ship meets the various international conventions covering ship operation, like SOLAS (Safety of Life at Sea, that covers way more than just lifeboats and fire pumps), MARPOL (Marine Pollution Prevention, including oil pollution, air pollution, garbage, sewage, and HAZMAT chemicals), STCW (covering the documentation, competency, and training of crew, including the required work/rest hour minimums), MLC (covering the living conditions of the crew, their pay, their health care, their terms of employment), ISPS (covering ship and port security) and the ISM (covering every aspect of ship operations from how the navigation team decides on a route for the ship to take, to crew management and disciplinary actions, to how equipment is to be maintained, to how spare parts are purchased, and on and on, large to small).

 

Class society "rules for shipbuilding", which covers only the physical condition of the vessel run to books hundreds of pages long.  Their rules for the various other conventions are not as involved, since the conventions themselves spell out the requirements, and these run hundreds of pages.  And a company's ISM code will be huge (ours is so large, and dynamic, that we don't keep hard copies, only digital), many hundreds of pages.

 

The class societies are the ones that insurance companies would go to for the actuarial data needed to set insurance premiums (and that is what they do for the P&I mutual clubs), so the fact that a "twice in 5 years" interval for drydocking for ships over 15 years old is universal tells you that this is pretty much an immutable fact, regarding ship reliability.

[AmazedByCruising]

Once again, thank you for the wealth of information you provide. It really is fantastic that on a forum meant to discuss formal nights and chocolates someone takes the time to tell the very details of how the ships work. Also, I heard that you are quite soon having enough time to write the book 🙂

 

11 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

And, as for your "rusting bit" that no one cared to look at, again I say "Crimson Polaris" or "MV Wakashio" or "MV Prestige".  None of these had anything to do with a "mad Captain", but instead a structural flaw or deterioration of the vessel.

 

I've looked those up. "Crimson Polaris was swept away by a strong wind while anchored and resultantly ran aground". Would a dry dock have prevented this? MV Wakashio "was inspected by Nippon Kaiji Kyokai", the classification society just 5 months before the accident. MV Prestige also was inspected by the American Bureau of Shipping and that apparently didn't help.

 

 

11 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

What more "refined system" would you propose?  Statistics say that after a certain time, ships start to deteriorate, and so slightly ahead of that time, we need to start more diligent inspections.  You seem hung up on "mad Captains", but even there, the classification societies set the standards for the ISM code the company adopts (

 

By a mad Captain, I meant Schettino 🙂. For cruise ships, the biggest risk does not seem to be that the ship or its engines were the root cause for disasters, nor a lack of documentation on how the ship should be managed, it was people making wrong decisions at the wrong time. Most recent and most notable: Viking Sky and Costa Concordia. So if I were leading the risk management department of a company that insures ships, which could be another line and not necessarily an insurance company, I wouldn't rely on dry docks and ISM. So to "refine", maybe I'd want a full time embedded inspector who reports violations and can put an end to the carreer of the Captain. Or, maybe simply ask crew members every few months if they feel that the company wouldn't mind ordering them to use a magic pipe, dump garbage, or ignore alarms. If more than 20% would (anonymously) answer yes, the premium is raised. 

 

My company also has its "ISM", and we felt it was necessary to make a short version in the form of a "thou shalt not" kind of document, together with sanctions. While in a perfect world crew would be looking up how to handle luggage in a safe manner, and the Captain would look in the manual to see how far he should stay from land, in reality people simply guess what the procedures are and to what extent the company expects them to follow them. IMHO, the only realistic way to have procedures followed is to train people to the point that they guess right and could write the ISM themselves. So that's another way to assess the risk. Ask the bar crew to write down what they'd do if the ship suddenly lists and count how many mention bottles compared to how many would worry about moving furniture. There's footage of the Costa Concordia incident where bartenders took care of the bottles.

In short, I think there is more than "did you have a dry dock no longer than 2.5 years ago" to calculate the risks. 

[chengkp75]

10 hours ago, AmazedByCruising said:

I've looked those up. "Crimson Polaris was swept away by a strong wind while anchored and resultantly ran aground". Would a dry dock have prevented this? MV Wakashio "was inspected by Nippon Kaiji Kyokai", the classification society just 5 months before the accident. MV Prestige also was inspected by the American Bureau of Shipping and that apparently didn't help.

Yes, Polaris went aground, and no a drydock survey would not have prevented this.  However, many ships run aground each year, but they don't break in two.  Yes, the other ships were inspected by class societies, and still failed.  But, just like anything in life, nothing is perfect, you don't score 100% all the time, so incidents like this happen.  But, by frequent inspection, the number of these incidents is minimized.  Also, you can't inspect every item (like every single inch of weld on a ship's hull) every time, so you use science and statistics to determine the most critical spots and check those every time, and get a representative sample of other areas.

 

I knew who you meant.  The ISM is designed to prevent people from making those bad decisions, and  without using a "secret shopper" (hard to do with a crew of 20), a systemic history of making those bad decisions will be shown in ISM documentation.  We live with ISM every minute of every working day.

 

As for Viking Sky.  You will note that the Captain received no punishment for the incident, nor condemnation from the Norwegian Maritime Agency.  Why?  Because he followed the ISM, as it was written at the time.  Schettino, on the other hand, did not follow ISM, and was therefore held responsible.  Was the Viking ISM modified due to the Sky incident, of course it was, both with regards to proper engine maintenance and heavy weather procedures.  That is what the ISM is all about, it does not place blame for incidents, it uses them to study how to prevent them from happening again.  Blame never improves the system, it just removes the cause of the immediate problem.  If your company's "ISM" places sanctions, it is not a real ISM type of system.  If I follow all of the procedures set out by the company, as approved by the third party auditor (class), as meeting the requirements of the IMO convention, and things still go wrong, they will not look to fire me, they will ask my help in determining new policies and procedures to prevent it from happening again.  If I am facing sanctions for my actions, I may not be as forthcoming in giving the exact details of how and why the incident happened, I'd be more interested in covering it up.

 

And, as I've noted above, the class societies look at way more, way more often than merely a twice in 5 year drydock rule.  They look at the ship top to bottom, and look at the crew (I believe I stated this about various conventions that have nothing to do with ship construction), but the drydocking requirement is needed to ensure the "foundation of the building" (the hull under water) is safe to support everything else.

[Ken the cruiser]

Glad I found this thread as it kind of explains the gap between CP's last scheduled cruise ending 4/7/2022 and not starting back up until 4/26/2022 out of San Francisco bound for Ft Lauderdale on an 18 day cruise through the PC. Thanks!

 

Edited September 15, 2021 by Ken the cruiser

[rettie]

On 8/23/2021 at 4:23 AM, ceilidh1 said:

 

They don't have that info - just when/where ship will go for drydock...

 

 

 

They will let me know if there are any updates/changes. Currently, the most recent drydock/wetdock schedule is the one I posted (updated just under a month ago). I'm also hoping it changes as I'm booked on Crown Princess during it's (currently) scheduled drydock....lol

we are on Crown too and flying from Scotland. I’ve contacted my Princess Cruise Planner as it’s takes a bit to organising flights etc. 

[rorndorff]

Since the Caribbean Princess just went thru dry dock in 2019, I'm curious if anyone has been able to determine what will be done to her while in dry dock in Portland Apr 7 - 25, 2022?  We are scheduled on her thru the panama canal out of SFO April 26th.  Can't wait!

[rick160158]

10 hours ago, rorndorff said:

Since the Caribbean Princess just went thru dry dock in 2019, I'm curious if anyone has been able to determine what will be done to her while in dry dock in Portland Apr 7 - 25, 2022?  We are scheduled on her thru the panama canal out of SFO April 26th.  Can't wait!

I had read somewhere that the dry dock was for routine engine and mechanical maintenance. Nothing to do with inside the ship.

Edited February 11, 2022 by rick160158