Back-to-back cruise ships are pulling into Esquimalt Graving Dock, providing work to hundreds of trades employed by Victoria Shipyards.
First to arrive is the 965-foot Celebrity Millennium, which sailed in Tuesday for a 14-day refit, a process similar to a tune-up for a vehicle.
When that job is finished, the Crystal Serenity will come in for a 10-day refit.
The 820-foot Serenity will become the largest cruise ship to cross the Northwest Passage when it makes the voyage in August. It will be carrying 1,000 passengers and 700 crew members on its trip from Anchorage, Alaska, to New York.
Millennium is delivering work for 350 to 400 Victoria Shipyards workers and local subcontractors, such as scaffolding and waste-treatment firms, said Joe O’Rourke, Victoria Shipyards general manager.
About the same number of workers will be needed for the Serenity’s refit, O’Rourke said.
All the paint on Millennium’s hull will be blasted off and it will be repainted while here.
This kind of job is done about every 15 years or so, O’Rourke said. As paint ages, it can slow down a ship’s speed and increase the amount of fuel used.
In this case, robots attached to the side of the ship by magnets will blast paint off the hull using water. When it’s time to paint, robots will be back crawling up and down the hull, spraying paint.
The robots will be directed by an operator with a joy stick, O’Rourke said.
But because robots can not operate on the ship’s curvature, workers holding wands with nozzles will fire paint at 30,000 pounds per square inch for those areas, he said.
Another high-pressure water retrieval system will suck up the water and paint debris as it comes off the vessel, he said.
Refits on the two cruise ships also require steel work. A new internal staircase for the Millennium will be installed. Serenity’s steel work will smooth out the hull.
On Tuesday, there were about 400 workers at the yard, and that number will rise now that the Millennium is here. The yard has just wrapped up a five-year modernization project on five frigates.
Two New Zealand frigates are expected to arrive under a modernization deal as well, with the first anticipated to be here sometime next year, O’Rourke said.
Victoria Shipyards has spent years focusing on winning cruise ship refit business. Ideally, the yard would work up to three or four of these vessels per year, he said.
Cruise ship refits are lucrative contracts for the shipyard. A 10-day refit in December was valued at $4 million to $5 million.
