Dry-dock

I’m not sure whether to consider myself lucky or unlucky to have a dry-dock during my first contract.  It’s definitely good experience to have but it’s also a lot of work.  For anyone who doesn’t already know, dry-dock is when the ship is removed from the water for a period of time for maintenance of the hull, propellers, and anything else under the waterline.  Of course since we don’t carry passengers to dry-dock, we are also able to carry out a wide variety of maintenance in all areas of the ship.  There are many things that ships go through every dry-dock such as replacing carpet, re-upholstering furniture, and re-finishing wood surfaces. We left Bayonne on January 3rd as early as possible, as I recall about 11:30am and arrived in Freeport, Bahamas 2 days later at roughly the same time.  There was some wind which delayed the process but we were into the dock by about 1:30pm.  Next the position of the ship was fine-tuned and then we started to come out of the water.  There is an interesting tidbit about the Freeport dry-docks that I didn’t really realize before we arrived. 

They aren’t like others I’ve seen on TV which are at sea level at all times and when they want to empty it, the doors are closed and the water is pumped out.  The Freeport dock is different, it’s a floating dock.  The tanks of the dock are filled with water which causes it to sink.  The ship is then positioned into the dry-dock and the dock lifts the ship out of the water (very slowly).  The process took about 8 hours before the ship was completely out of the water.  Many crew including myself were moved to guest cabins as the water has been turned off to some of the areas where crew cabins exist to facilitate plumbing repairs.  The distribution of cabins was random and unfortunately for the sake of viewing the process of coming out of the water, I got an inside cabin.  My co-worker however got a deck 6 balcony hump cabin so I was able to get a great view from there, including seeing a little bit of what was going on below the ship.
The whole production team has been working very hard during dry-dock.  We have contractors onboard to install new lighting and sound gear in many of the venues in addition to performing refurbishments and repairs in many different areas.  Personally, my work has involved printing drawings for the entertainment systems in all the different venues, cleaning band gear, cleaning lights, repairing cables, and many other tasks.   We are also melting the ice in Studio B during dry-dock and making fresh ice before we leave Freeport (making ice while the ship is level is much easier).
The new sound mixer has been installed in Studio B The Palace theater.  Explorer now definitely has the nicest sound console in the fleet except perhaps Oasis.  It’s a DiGiCo D5 Live.  It’s a larger job than just replacing the mixer itself as there is a whole lot of back-end equipment from the old sound console that was removed and lots more gear going in.  There are also brand new Shure UHF-R microphones and a new system to replace the DA-98 tape decks to provide personal monitor mixes to every musician.

Upon arriving in Freeport, we joined Holland America Line’s Princendam (their smallest ship) and the Carnival Fascination just arrived recently.   Princendam is in dry-dock as well, and Carnival Fascination is awaiting our departure to use the dock we have been occupying.  I can tell the Carnival Fascination is undergoing extensive work as they appear to be adding additional balconies on each side and at the aft (shown at right).  From what I have heard, they will be in Freeport for about 30 days.






Additional Photos (click the photo to enlarge):

Arriving in Freeport	Our dry-dock before entering	The other 2 docks (fully raised), Princendam is on the left.
Arriving in the dock.  Current depth: 32’	Fully positioned	Starting to lift out of the water, 26’ to go.
10 feet to go	8 hours later, finally dry	Lights down for cleaning
Containers on the deck	The Royal Promenade, no passengers	Work on the pool deck