Cascade General On Cruise Ship Schedule

It took a private jet and an overnight flight to Texas to keep Holland America Lines cruise ship Veendam on schedule during its recent drydocking by Cascade General. The chartered plane returned to the Portland, Oregon Airport with a pair of Timken shaft bearings and seals, needed to complete the overhaul of the ship's stabilizers. The work on the drydock, which included replacement of seals on a stern tube and three thrusters and the cleaning and repair of seven main engine intercoolers, was completed on schedule in four days.

That project was just the latest example of the total effort that keeps Portland on the itinerary of all the major cruise lines. As their ships head south at the end of the Alaska cruising season, Cascade General is strategically placed to perform maintenance and repair work on several vessels in quick succession. As soon as the Veendam was back in the water, Princess Cruises' Dawn Princess was lifted on the 982' Dry Dock 4 and the cycle began again. The bottom was blasted and re-coated and the topside strake above the waterline hydro-blasted for a complete re-paint. The three greywater holding tanks, located between the inner and outer skins, were opened for access from the exterior or the engine room. A specialist crew was responsible for thoroughly cleaning and blasting the areas, to remove all traces of corrosion and to apply a five coat system in the short availability.

The Italian-built ship also needed the transducers inside its stabilizers replaced and all the grids on the thrusters removed. It had previously undergone a week's work dockside, where all the lifeboats were removed for davit maintenance by the crew and sub-contractors went to work on the interior. Projects here included refinishing the extensive marble flooring in the ship's atrium, removing sub-flooring then re-tiling around the bathing pools and replacing all outdoor carpeting on decks 12 and 13.

Cascade General's crews undertook the complete re-painting of some of ship's ventilation ducts, which required extensive staging extending from deck 14 down to deck 6, and also installed exhaust-measurement instruments in the stacks for the four diesel-electric engines, two incinerators and two boilers. "Naturally, planning for all this began months before the ships' arrival," explains Cascade General executive vice-president and cruise ship specialist Suren Menon. "But we also have to be prepared for the unexpected, like the Veendam's stabilizers, which needed more work than was anticipated. The key is flexibility. We've made great strides here to speed up decision-making and increase our productivity.

In addition to this typical maintenance program, tighter schedules in the cruise industry have made the three-week, re-positioning window the only time available for major upgrades to the fleet. The third cruise ship due in Portland--the Regal Princess in November--is slated for a turnkey stern thruster installation along with interior and bottom work. This will be the third Princess Lines ship to receive an additional thruster at Cascade General.

Many of the preparations for a successful cruise ship stopover take place behind the scenes--including the timely delivery of huge quantities of carpeting and furnishings, housing the visiting craft specialists and supplying them with all necessary shipboard services. In the shipyard's shops, items like cabin-deck extensions and thruster tubes are pre-fabricated and ready-to-go when the ship arrives. Within days of departure, these floating cities will be embarking thousands of passengers, so delays are simply not acceptable. At Cascade General, that's a challenge the yard thrives on.

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Cascade General operates Portland Shipyard, the largest and most complete ship repair and industrial facility on the West Coast of the United States. We provide full-service repairs and conversions for tankers, cruise ships, bulk carriers, container ships, government vessels, tugs, barges and workboats. Cascade General's Portland facility includes a 60-acre (24.2 ha) yard, 550,000 square feet (51,096 square meters) of craft shops, more than 7,600 ft. (2,326 meters) of full-service repair berths, and two floating dry docks.