Equinox, the world’s latest shiny new 2850 passenger cruise ship

Equinox, the world’s latest shiny new 2850 passenger cruise ship is coming to Southampton at the end of July and before entering service, firstly in the Med and then the Caribbean. Paul and I (together with our wives and 600 or so other lucky souls) will be on board, ‘inspecting’ all her luxury suites and other facilities on a one night cruise. It’s the annual Passenger Shipping Association dinner when all the leading lights of the cruise and ferry industries get together. No doubt there’ll loads of vips and celebrities there too. Quite appropriate as the cruise line which owns Equinox is Celebrity Cruises.

Equinox was built in a shed in a small town in Germany about 26 miles from the sea. I was there when the keel was laid for P&O’s Oriana in 1994. Meyer-Werft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meyer_Werft has been building boats and ships in the middle of flat rural northern Germany for generations, since 1795, and is one of the few leading cruise ship builders in the world. These ships really are built inside, in a giant shed complete with roof and its own indoor dry dock.. If the ships look impressive imagine what a 470m x 100m shed looks like!

Equinox is the second of five sisters in the Solstice Class with Eclipse due in service from the middle of 2010 and from Southampton. Construction of Eclipse began in Papaneburg in January.

Papenburg is linked to the oceans by a the Ems river. When these new vessels leave the shipyard for their one way journey to the sea they look, for all the world, as if they are serenely gliding through the fields of Lower Saxony. It’s always an occasion and you may have seen the photographs in recent weeks which have been in the world’s newspapers. Equinox on the Ems river-canal even sailed over a German Autobahn. See it for yourself on you tube:

I’ll tell you more about Equinox in August, such as its half acre of lawn, it’s glass blowing studio!