Dry-dock repairs for Cunard Queen

After a quicker-than-usual turnaround, Cunard cruise ship Queen Victoria slipped away from Southampton’s Ocean Terminal shortly after 10.00 this morning.
There were no passengers on board, however. Instead of setting out on its scheduled 16-night voyage to Venice and the Adriatic, the ship is heading for dry dock where repairs will be carried out to one of its propulsion pods.
Problems with a bearing in one of the pods – which contain huge electric motors to drive the propellers – had restricted the ship’s speed for the last two cruises.
The work is being carried out in the Lloyd Werft shipyard in Bremerhaven, Germany, where a damaged pod on Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 was repaired in 2006.
Victoria should be back in Southampton on October 17 for a two-night mini-cruise to Zeebrugge before setting out on a 23-night voyage to the Caribbean.
When the cancellation of the Adriatic cruise was announced last month, Cunard president Peter Shanks said: “We are very sorry to disrupt our passengers’ travel plans. We are doing all we can to minimise the impact on our passengers and to help everyone affected find suitable alternative holidays.”
►Another cruise ship needing urgent maintenance put into dry dock in Bayonne, New Jersey, on Monday. The 400-passenger Silver Whisper missed a visit to Newport, Rhode Island in order to carry out repairs to a propeller.
Passengers whose cruise was cut short by a day were offered an overnight hotel stay in New York. The work has also affected the ship’s next cruise, which will depart today. A second planned call in Newport has been cancelled, and the ship will proceed directly to Boston, Massachusetts.