Breakaway, Breeze and Reflection: full steam ahead for 3 new ships

What’s going on here, then? With that big red button, it could be the EuroMillions lottery draw – but the hard hats would be out of place. There are millions of euros involved though, because the picture shows today’s ceremony marking the cutting of the first piece of steel for the construction of Norwegian Cruise Line’s next ship, Breakaway.
Kevin Sheehan, NCL’s chief executive (in the white hat) got things under way, watched by shipyard managing director Bernard Meyer. S678 is the yard construction number allocated to the project, and every single piece of metal – from nuts and bolts to giant sheets of steel – will be bar-coded to indicate where it fits in the hull.
Norwegian Breakaway is scheduled to be delivered in spring 2013 and will carry about 4,000 passengers. It will be followed 12 months later by twin sister Norwegian Getaway.
It’s been a busy week in the shipyards. A few days ago Mr Meyer looked on as a giant crane lowered the first 500-ton block of Celebrity Reflection into a dry dock (above). The 3,030-passenger vessel will be the fifth and last of Celebrity’s Solstice class. Due for delivery in autumn 2012, it will have one more deck than its sisters.
And in the Monfalcone shipyard near Trieste in north-east Italy, the 3,690-passenger Carnival Breeze (below) was floated out of dry-dock and into the sea for the first time. After another eight months of fitting out, the ship will be christened next June.