Countdown to Queen Elizabeth - 267 days

As Queen Mary 2 prepares to make her maiden southbound transit of the Suez Canal, Queen Victoria has also found the warmth of the Caribbean having made her maiden call to Grand Cayman yesterday. We anchored just off Georgetown, very close to a new pier:

We were lucky to be the only ship in, so we had the island to ourselves, where we could enjoy the delights of snorkeling, seven mile beach, Tortuga Rum Cake and an opportunity to go to Hell. No I am not being rude, there really is a place called Hell and it’s a group of short, black, limestone formations in the northwest of the island roughly the size of a football pitch. There are numerous explanations of how Hell received its name, but they are generally variations on what locals perceive Hell would look like. Whatever the origins of the name, many of our guests and crew go there, just so they have this claim to fame and post their cards from this spot with a special stamp.

Thank you again for all the comments about the previous Queen Elizabeth “Float Out Ceremony” Blogs. We will of course keep you updated with all the news as it happens. In this Blog and third video, we have a special interview with Queen Elizabeth’s Madrina, Dennie Farmer and also the ship yard director Paolo Capobianco.

Once the ceremony had been completed by the dry dock, which was now filling with water, we were treated to a wonderful reception and lunch in the Fincantieri offices at the Monfalcone ship yard. We were first given a very special souvenir programme of the day:

Inside the programme was a fitting tribute to our new Queen and Cunard’s proud and rich history, which included this great picture comparing Cunard’s latest liner with the very first ship, Britannia, which began Samuel Cunard’s company in 1840

There was some fantastic memorabilia around the room from the private collection of Maurizio Eliseo and Paolo Piccione, which celebrated many of the Cunard Liners of the past, including the previous ships bearing the name Elizabeth:

In this next Video Blog you’ll see that while we were at the reception I managed to have a chat with both Dennie Farmer and Paolo Capobianco, before heading back to Queen Elizabeth to have a look at the progress of the inside of the ship.

You’ll be able to see the next Video Blog in the series on Thursday, when I’ll be guiding you through the interior of Queen Elizabeth and there’ll also be an exclusive interview with Cunard’s President and Managing Director Peter Shanks. Thank you to both Dennie Farmer and Paolo Capobianco for their time and again to our cameraman Andrew, as well as everyone else at the Fincantieri ship yard for all their help on that day.

Meanwhile I’ll be back tomorrow with a special Blog from Queen Mary 2. Although the festive celebrations of Christmas and New Year may see a long time ago, we thought you’d still like to see how our flagship celebrated the season with a Guest Blog from Freda Singleton, Queen Mary 2’s Social Hostess.

Thank you again for logging on and please keep those comments and questions coming in. Cheers for now, Alastair

Countdown to Queen Elizabeth - 280 days

Monday 4 January is a special day, as both Queen Mary 2 and Queen Victoria begin their 2010 World Voyages, but this year there is a difference. Queen Victoria heads west to New York while her sister will, for the first time, begin her World Voyage heading east from New York to Southampton. I’ll make sure we get pictures from both ships as they progress around the world.

Meanwhile our third Queen is nearing the next milestone in her construction; the float out ceremony. That will be happening tomorrow and over the last few weeks the final additions have been made to her superstructure ready for her big day on 5 January.

These photos were taken just before Christmas and Queen Elizabeth entered in to the festive spirit with a special addition to her iconic funnel for the town of Monfalcone to admire.

Another very important addition was the forward main mast, which will carry many vital elements of the ship’s navigation equipment and is also where some of the ships flags are flown from.

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The final touches are also being added to the bow as the familiar livery of the white and federal grey paint are added.

One of the last jobs was to add the propellers to the Azipod motors at the stern of the vessel. It’s only when you see someone working on them that you realise how massive they are.

Work is progressing fast inside as well, and this is the first view of the magnificent staircase in the Royal Arcade.

I’m really looking forward to seeing her for myself again tomorrow as I return to Monfalcone for the float out ceremony. This will be a very exciting moment as Queen Elizabeth’s hull touches water for the first time and moves to her outfitting dock. I’ll post the first pictures of that ceremony on Thursday with some videos including an interview with President and Managing Director Peter Shanks. Cheers Alastair

Countdown to Queen Elizabeth - 313 days

Welcome to another special Queen Elizabeth update, and the last of the videos and pictures from my visit to the shipyard a couple of weeks ago. Thank you for all the great comments, especially about these updates; we’ll certainly keep them coming and will try and get some more pictures posted before Christmas. The next key date everyone is waiting for is when Queen Elizabeth will be floated out from her dry dock and move to her first outfitting dock. I’m afraid I don’t have a firm date on that yet but we understand it will be at the beginning of January. I’ll of course let you know and we’ll hopefully get some pictures and video of that to you very soon after the event.

I also have some more news about recent awards Cunard Line has won. In the recently announced annual Porthole Magazine Readers’ Choice Awards, Cunard was awarded ‘Best Onboard Educational Programs’, ‘Best World Itineraries’ and ‘Best Transatlantic Itineraries’. With that great news here’s this week in Cunard’s history, for the week 4 to 10 December:

4 December 1975 QE2 completes her first million miles of steaming

6 December 2008 Queen Victoria makes maiden call at La Goulette

10 December 1999 The Caronia is renamed at a ceremony in Liverpool

10 December 2007 Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cornwall names Queen Victoria, Cunard’s 147th ship.

So now back to Queen Elizabeth and the third and final installment with pictures and video from my visit to the shipyard in Monfalcone, Italy. As we walked forward through the ship, I had to really think hard about which space we were in. Passing through the Queens Room and Royal Arcade, I was excited to see how the Royal Court Theatre was looking. Walking in on deck 2, I was greeted by this incredible view of what will be the stunning auditorium.

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With a bit of imagination you can see where the seating will be, with the stage area directly ahead in the middle. Queen Elizabeth’s Royal Court Theatre will have the same amazingly clear sightlines, so don’t worry, the big steel girders are just there temporarily while the shipyard strengthen the structure around the theatre. The big white panel on the stage is the biggest fire screen door that will be on the ship. This leads from the stage to the scenery dock area where the scenic elements of shows will be kept. Just before you ask, I’m afraid I don’t have any details on the shows yet, but I do know they will be brand new shows, designed exclusively for Queen Elizabeth. Of course, as with all the breaking news items on our new Queen, I’ll let you know as soon as I can. Meanwhile it was time to try out one of the theatre boxes.

Queen Elizabeth will be just the second ship in the world to have private theatre boxes, following their huge success on Queen Victoria. I had to clamber up scaffolding to get there, but it was so good to see it all coming together. So here it is, the final video clip of our visit:

Our thanks again to Simona and Antonio in the Fincantieri ship yard for all their help over that weekend. They were so accommodating with their time and I think the results of their patience speak for themselves. We’ll try and get some more pictures soon but in the meantime I’ll be back on Monday with a very different Blog which tells a moving story from one of our crew members. Cheers, Alastair

Breaking News – The Latest Pictures Of Queen Elizabeth

Countdown to Queen Elizabeth - 334 days

With just eleven months before our new Queen joins the Cunard fleet and begins her maiden voyage, the countdown to her arrival is gathering pace. Although I’ll be returning to Monfalcone this weekend, Simona has sent me some new pictures, which mark quite a milestone in the construction process. I was going to wait until my visit to ship yard on Sunday before posting any more pictures of Queen Elizabeth’s progress, but then these arrived, so I thought I had to share them.

Before that though, I have had some interesting news today regarding another Blog, readers may be interested in. As we mentioned yesterday, Cunard recently won a prestigious Conde Nast award and the Condé Nast Traveler magazine interviewed our President and Managing Director, Peter Shanks. You may be interested to see the interview that Wendy Perrin posted on her “The Perrin Post” Blog on the magazine’s Web site. You can view her story at: http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/blogs/perrinpost .

Now back to Queen Elizabeth and as readers of this Blog will know, the ship is being built in blocks and sections which are then added to the vessel literally on a daily basis. This process is so quick that Queen Elizabeth will only spend 6 months in the dry dock before moving to her outfitting berth. A very important block was added this week and here it is being lowered on to the rest of the ship in the dry dock.

Yes it’s the bridge, where in just over 10 month’s time Captain Wells will assume command, and a couple weeks after that, Queen Elizabeth will begin her maiden voyage. This massive crane carefully lifts this whole bridge section, and slowly lowers it into place.

Whether it was by coincidence or not I don’t know, but as the bridge was being lowered in to place, a name with over 170 years of history was also being added to the hull.

You can see the iconic letters have been welded on to the ship’s side very recently, and once our new Queen is fully painted and ready to enter service, the Cunard name will look very similar to the lettering seen here on her sister, Queen Victoria:

Well that‘s it for the moment – but I’ll have lots more including video in about 10 days time and I have a feeling there will be a lot of progress to show you, so I must admit I’m getting very excited about seeing her again. I’ll post something as soon as I can so you can get the very latest news from the visit on this Blog.

Meanwhile I’ll be back on Monday with the interview with Queen Victoria’s new Chief Engineer, Ronnie Kier. Thank you again for logging on and please keep those comments and questions coming. Cheers, Alastair.

Two months after my last visit we have some more pictures of Queen Elizabeth under construction in the Fincantieri shipyard in Monfalcone, Italy. Last Thursday Queen Victoria made her first call to Venice this year and our guests enjoyed what I believe to be one of the most incredible cities in the world. I will do a full blog on our day there very soon and this will include some great pictures of the city, from the ship, as well as some stunning video footage of her arrival taken by our cameraman who watched Queen Victoria’s dramatic arrival from the shore side.

As we made our final approaches we could just see in the background, the Fincantieri ship yard in Marghera where just over 21 months ago Queen Victoria was completed.

As soon as we arrived, our guests set off to explore this beautiful city, while I started the ninety minute drive down the coast to the small town of Monefalcone to see how our new Queen was taking shape. So donned with a hard hat, I was taken around the yard and was amazed at the amount of ship sections and machinery, literally everywhere, all ready to be assembled and create our new liner. This is one of the boilers that will be in the technical spaces of Queen Elizabeth.

The numerous sections that will comprise the ship are made in to different blocks in various sheds around the yard and then put together to make bigger ones which become so large they are often worked on outside. It is sometimes a challenge to work out which piece is which, but I am fairly confident this block is the aft section of what will be deck 2 of the Britannia Restaurant.

Then as we turned the corner, it was the moment I had been waiting for, since seeing the keel being laid on the 2^nd of July. (If you haven’t seen those pictures or video you’ll find them on the 6^th, 9^th and 13^th of July postings.)

To be able to see into the dry dock, where in just a few months Queen Elizabeth will take to the water for the first time, was probably the most exciting part of the day. The progress was staggering as you can see from this photo which is looking aft with the ship’s bow in the foreground.

It gives you a great cross sectional view of her hull before the forward section, including the bulbous bow, is added. The height of the front section here is “A” deck which houses mainly crew areas including crew cabins which arrive in “Pods”, and you can see them covered in white plastic. If you look carefully you can also see the section of the hull which has been painted white, and where this starts is promenade deck 3. I think the open section that goes from “A” deck to deck 2 will eventually be the forward “A” staircase.

Moving along the port side of the ship you could see there are still many sections of the ship’s keel still waiting to be placed. The section on the right hand side of this photo is in its final position ready to be attached to more sections in the middle.

You can see the wire cables holding the last block in place (on the left of the picture), and these will remain there until the welding is complete. And if you look carefully you’ll see on this next photo the narrow gap of a few millimetres, waiting to be welded.

This next picture shows the aft section of the keel where the massive “Azipod” motors and propellers will be attached to underside of the missing section of hull. Also, as you can see, there is still one more small section to add to the very aft of the keel.

Then I was in for a real treat, yes I was actually going to be allowed to board the ship – well what there was of her anyway! I don’t know but my claim to fame may be that I was the first Cunard Employee to do so – who knows!

It was quite a strange feeling walking up the gangway knowing there was only a small part of here, yet realizing that crew will be boarding the ship for the first time in about a year’s time ready to take up their positions to prepare her for the maiden voyage. I entered on the “A” deck gangway and although it was very dark, with just a few lights powered by shore side generators, as I looked aft, I could just about make out to what I think will be the guest entrance to the Medical Centre. (The white doors on the left hand side)

It was an amazing day and I’d like to thank Simona Capraro who looked after us so well in the yard, along with Luca Fornasiero and Carlo Fucile from Fincantieri who were kind enough to give up their valuable time to show us around. The exciting news is that this is just part one of the pictures from this visit; I’ll post part two soon and these will be ones taken from a position I wasn’t sure was going to be possible. I was also accompanied by our cameraman, Andrew, who is currently preparing a video of the visit for this Blog which will also be posted soon.

So please keep logging on, as I have lots more to share with you and of course I’ll try and answer your questions too. I’ll be back on Thursday, if not before, with more news around the fleet. Cheers - Alastair