Planning Comes First In Cruise Ship Overhauls At Cascade General

On a well-run cruise, the passengers should be unaware of the intense, behind-the-scenes effort that the crew makes to ensure a carefree vacation. The same standard should apply when a cruise ship is in dry dock, says Suren Menon, Executive Vice President and cruise ship specialist at Cascade General. Only in this case, it's the crew and sub-contractors who should be unaware of the effort the shipyard is putting out.

For Menon, the yard is the Portland Shipyard, which has gained the majority of cruise ship work on the US West Coast since Cascade General took over the operation in 1995. In 1999, the yard successfully handled work on two ships simultaneously in the spring and fall (autumn) and welcomed a fifth arrival before year's end. The last visitor of the 1990s was the 245m (811') Regal Princess, which Princess Lines had scheduled for a Christmas departure from Los Angeles, followed by a special millennial New Year's cruise.

The Regal Princess represents a particular success for Menon and Cascade General, since it was only a year ago that it was in the yard for a major facelift. At that time, the yard installed a two-deck stern extension, to enlarge the Lido Cafe and create a new children's center, and completely remodeled the atrium. This time, the 1600-passenger ship was returning for the installation of an additional stern thruster, dining room remodeling and initial work for a new incinerator installation.

Just as the ship's managers have been planning its year 2000 program for the past year, Menon and his team have put countless hours into their planning process. "We received the preliminary RFQ (request for quotation) over a year ago," he said in late November during a brief interlude before the ship's arrival. "I didn't feel I needed to do a preliminary survey, since I was already very familiar with a sister ship. So we went straight to work on the bid."

In March of this year, the specifications and drawings were completed and sent to qualified yards in San Diego, San Francisco and Vancouver BC. Menon flew to Alaska to inspect the ship during the summer. The pressure intensified as the Cascade General team reviewed their numbers. All the bids were evaluated in September by Princess Cruises and the multi-million dollar contract awarded.

"Once we learned our bid was successful, we moved immediately into a second phase," Menon continued. "I flew to Honolulu to introduce myself to the captain and the chief engineer. Then, in Los Angeles I met with the company's superintendent of repairs, Lars Nordin, the vice president of technical operations, and their specialist designers and interior decorators."

Back in Oregon, Menon assembled his team, consisting of day and night superintendents and senior foremen, representing all the shipyard trades. They began regular production meetings where every line item on the specification was scrutinized and detailed. Besides the work which directly involves the shipyard--the thruster installation and all drydock work--they needed to plan how to meet the demands of the sixty specialist sub-contractors for services like crane lifts, rigging, offices, housing and firewatching.

Because of the limited time available, Menon considers it vital that some of his men begin the hands-on work on a project like this before the ship arrives in Portland. Consequently, two weeks before it was due, the first mobile team was flown out to meet the ship in Acapulco, Mexico. Their task was to access and clean the tanks and bilge area that would comprise the new thruster compartment. A week later, the second crew flew to Los Angeles. After the passengers had disembarked, they began preparing the interior. "Our traveling teams save us a week's work in the shipyard," Menon assured me.

Forty-eight hours before the ship reached Portland, the new controllable-pitch Lipps stern thruster had arrived by truck after shipment from Holland. Menon and his foremen were busy checking to ensure all the sub-contractors had their tools, materials and personnel on site. (If anyone isn't absolutely ready to go, then it's up to the yard to find out who and what is missing and locate replacements.) Many specialists are based in Florida cities that are homeports for the cruise lines. One exception is Maritime Services Corporation, which is based in Hood River, 60 miles from Portland.

The Regal Princess picked up a Columbia Bar pilot early in the morning of December 1st, and entered the Columbia River. A river pilot took over off Astoria, and the ship arrived in Portland at 9.15 PM. By then, a strong breeze was whipping up from the south. Cascade General's dockmaster, Mark Root, watched anxiously as the wind gauge on his control panel registered gusts up to 30 mph. Four Foss tugs were stationed around the towering Regal Princess, as her captain lined up his approach and began to edge cautiously toward Dry Dock 4.

From the ends of the 982' long dry dock, the rigging crews watched intently as the tugs churned the waters of the Willamette River, trying to hold the 35,000-ton displacement ship in place. As the wind gusted higher, it became clear that the maneuver was not possible. At 9.45PM the ship dropped back, spun around in mid stream and came into a berth at the dockside. The next morning, conditions were perfect and the ship was high and dry in a couple of hours.

Approximately 350 journeymen were ready to begin work, with an absolute time limit of 18 days for completion. The drydock crew set to work, quickly positioning an array of hoses, water and sand blasting tanks under the ship. The bottom was given a "light blast" sufficient to remove loose paint and expose any corroded areas. These were blasted again to expose bare metal and then received the first of five coats of primer, followed by anti-fouling.

The thruster installation was part of a continuing upgrade of the entire Princess fleet to enable safer docking in smaller, more remote ports. Cascade General has previously added thrusters to the Sky Princess and Crown Princess in 1997-98, while they were lifted on its 983' Dry Dock 4.

The hull was opened and the computer-cut parts for the necessary, structural reinforcement lifted into the compartment. The three frames filling the 2.8m (9') wide space between two existing bulkheads were extended from 6.25" (160mm) to 700mm (27.5"). 160mm face plates were added to these webs and connected to three new overhead beams, distributing the thruster's loads further into the structure.

This also provided a strong point to hoist the thruster's 1515kw (2,000hp) Hyundai electric motor up from the dry dock floor and safely suspend it until the Lipps thruster, weighing 8,900kg (20,000lbs), could be hauled into position. Once the thruster was permanently welded into the shell and frames, the motor was lowered onto the drive shaft and the electric, hydraulic and cooling systems connected. The exterior welds were x-rayed and approved by RINA, the ship's classification society, which also inspected all the system installations.

The new thruster takes power from the ship's diesel-electric propulsion system, powered by four MAN 8-cylinder diesels, which produce 36,800 Kw. The controllable pitch of the new thruster will provide superior control, while the more powerful motor will produce 50% more torque than the existing stern thruster.

Higher in the ship, on decks 6,7 and 8, work also proceeded on the foundations for a Team Tec Golar waste incinerator, which included separate mixing tanks, fan and ducts. All the plans necessary for all of these modifications were prepared by Rosenblatt & Sons naval architects of San Francisco, with whom the yard has established a good relationship over the years.

Out on the dock, a boat shop had been erected around the ship's four 14.7m (48') tenders and fiberglass repair work was underway. By the second week, the superintendent's final list of work orders totaled 114 separate items, ranging from marking the anchor chain on the dock floor to assisting the swimming pool re-tiling experts on the top deck.

With all the underwater work completed, the ship was ready to come off the dry dock on the evening of December 15th, but incredibly, the wind picked up during the day and was howling by the afternoon. With gusts of 40 knots making walking difficult, the operation was postponed until the morning, when once again, calm conditions prevailed. Nonetheless, all the shipyard's work was completed ahead of schedule. Except for the unusual weather, the project had proceeded smoothly. As planned, work would continue on the dining room while the ship sailed south. Life on board had continued normally for the 700 crew, and the Regal Princess would be on time for the millennium sailing!

Related articles

Cascade General on Schedule for Cruise Ships (July 28)

Cascade General on Schedule for Cruise Ships (Sep. 22)

Cascade General on Cruise Ship Schedule (Oct. 14)

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.