The 947-foot-long Crown Princess cruise ship is at Esquimalt Graving Dock for an 11-day refit by Victoria Shipyards.
About 350 workers are on the job, Joe O’Rourke, Shipyards general manager, said Tuesday.
A major component of the work is installation of two scrubber systems in the funnels, he said. “It’s a pretty intense project.”
A scrubber system “significantly reduces the soot and a lot of emissions that are coming off the funnel. So it’s a good thing for us and it’s a good thing for the environment when those things get put into place,” O’Rourke said.
The graving dock is running rotating crews 20 to 24 hours each day in order to complete the job on time. The ship is slated to pull out on May 13.
Crown Princess, which is owned by Princess Cruises, was in Victoria on May 1 before departing for Vancouver. On May 22, it’s scheduled to arrive back at Ogden Point from Ketchikan, Alaska, at 7 p.m. and leave for Seattle at 11:59 p.m.
It can carry 3,080 passengers.
When big cruise ships pull into the graving dock for refits, they deliver millions of dollars to the local economy.
The Crown Princess job will be worth more than $5 million, O’Rourke said.
There’s the possibility of another cruise-ship job in the last quarter of this year, but that has not been confirmed, he said. Two cruise ships are booked in for 2016 and there’s a chance of a third, O’Rourke said.
