Caribbean Princess from Monday night
We wake up a 6:30am and get ready to watch the arrival of the "Oasis of the Seas". We see the Pilot Boat head out, so we know that we will be seeing the ship very soon. A few minutes we can see the bow coming around the point. The thing is massive. We watch it pass and then it has to turn into its slip on the far side of the dry dock we are on. 4 bow thrusters and stern pods make the turn look easy. The amount of water that is being pushed is amazing. It looks like a giant swirling pool. The swirl grows larger and larger until it covers almost have the distance to the far shore. I wouldn't want to be the boats across the way. There must have been a huge strain of the moorings that they were on. The entire dry dock is pushed by the water. Luckily the mgr. of Sub Base had his guys put additional lines and a steel cable on the dry dock to keep it in place. It took about 30 minutes for the ship to come to its final rest place next to us. We are dwarfed by it. I can't imagine how tell it is, but the dry dock is 20ft. high and the ship looms at least another 50 ft. above that. We, up in the dry dock don't even come up to the level of the life boats. All the cabins first start above the life rafts. It is just HUGE! Hopefully I can get the video uploaded.
After the ship is settled in, work begins here. They continue to work to remove the shaft and once that is out they discover that the stuffing box seal is damaged. This is the stuffing box that we replaced last Feb. Whatever is causing the bearing to heat up has apparently done damage to the stuffing box seal. It is also decided that the cutlass bearing will be replaced. They now have to Fed-Ex these new parts in from Florida for Wed. as they must be finished by Thursday morning as we need to get off the drydock as they have the 145fter scheduled to be hauled first thing. Sure hope the parts arrive on time. So our haul on Monday and splash on Tuesday is a figment of our imagination. Guess we are stuck in this drydock until Thursday morning. Yuck! Great Vacation.
So we have been told that "Cruising" is just having expensive boat repairs done in exotic places. How true!
Paul has rebedded the swim ladder bracket and has spent the rest of the day putting another 2 coats of Island Girl Products on the hull. I have cleaned all the baby powder off the stored seat cushions and put them all in place. Seems like a rather lame job, but the process takes about 2 hours. I then had to clean the rest of the baby powder out of the forward stateroom where they have been stored while we are away. Getting all the cushions out creates this giant pile and then the real job is to decipher which ones go where. This time I get smart and after I am sure that they are all in the correct places, I mark each one as to whether it is for the cockpit, bridge, or forward seating pit. Never again will it be a puzzle!
At the end of the day, we head over to Lisa & Andy’s boat for cocktails. It is interesting how quickly you can make friends in a “dry dock”. We leave LuSea on Cattitude and she is Not happy. She continues to serendate us while we are having cocktails. At 7pm, Oasis of the Seas starts to leave the dock. We head to the back of the dry dock to watch her leave. Not as impressive as the arrival as it is now really dark. The only thing that we really see are all the lights onboard. Quickly, she moves out of sight. Afterwards, a quick dinner and bed. Tomorrow is another day.
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