Sky Wonder

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section, while providing some complete reference citations, includes a list of references or external links, and its verifiability remains partly unclear because it has insufficient in-text citations.
You can improve this article by introducing more precise citations.

General characteristics
Turbine steam ship Sky Wonder

Entered Service:	March 1984
Re-entered service:	March 2006
Status:	Operating as Sky Wonder (Pullmantur, March 2006 -)
Tonnage:	46,000 gross tons
Length:	240 metres (787 feet)
Beam:	29.8 m (97 ft)
Draft:	8 m (26 ft)
Height:	Includes 11 passenger decks
Propulsion:	Powered by steam turbines
Speed:	Approximately 21 knots (38 km/h - 24 mph)
Complement:	1550 passengers – more than 55,000 Australians a year, 600 crew – one crew member per 2.5 passengers
Build Details:	CNIM France at a cost of AUD$300 million

The Sky Wonder (formerly FairSky, Pacific Sky, and Sky Princess) is a cruise ship built in 1984. As of May 2006, she operates in the Pullmantur Cruises fleet, Spain's biggest cruise and tour operator, owned by Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.

1 History
2 General characteristics
- 2.1 Incidents
3 References
4 External links

[edit] History

The Sky Wonder was built in 1984 by Chantiers de Nord et de la Mediterranee of La Seyne-Sur Mer in France for the Italian Cruise Company, Sitmar. In keeping with the rest of the Sitmar fleet she was originally named Fairsky and was registered in Liberia. In September of 1988, when Sitmar was purchased by Princess Cruises, she was renamed the Sky Princess and re-registered in London, England.

In October 2000 she was transferred to P&O Cruises Australia under the name Pacific Sky. Replacing the 1957-built Fair Princess, Pacific Sky's modernised facilities made her popular with Australian cruise passengers. Between 2000 and 2006, Pacific Sky carried 275,000 passengers on 200 cruises. Her popularity prompted the expansion of the P&O Australia fleet to include Pacific Sun (2004), and Pacific Dawn (Nov 2007).also Pacific Star which has also been sold to Pullmantur Cruises as Ocean Dream in March and is now enroute to Singapore to be refurbished and added to the fleet.

Pacific Sky promotional shot (P&O Cruises).

In May 2006, the transfer from P&O Cruises Australia to Pullmantur Cruises in Spain was made, after a series of 33 7-day cruises based out of Singapore. Currently registered in Malta, the SkyWonder displays Valletta as its home port. The US-built Regal Princess took SkyWonder's place in the P&O Cruises fleet in mid-2007.

[edit] General characteristics

Promenade deck on the Sky Wonder

Sky Wonder is 240.4 metres in length and 29.8 metres in width at her widest point. Her draft is approximately 8.5 metres which is the measurement of the amount of the vessel underwater, although this figure varies with respect to the amount of stores, fuel and water onboard.

The size of a cruise ship is expressed in gross tonnage, which is actually a measurement of the vessels volume and not the actual weight. The gross tonnage of the Sky Wonder is 46,087 tonnes. When the weight of the passengers, baggage, stores, water and fuel is added this weight increases by approximately 31,000 tonnes. At full speed she can consume up to 220 tonnes of fuel oil a day.

Sky Wonder is powered by steam turbines, and is one of the last steam turbine cruise ships in the world. Whilst at sea she can operate on 2 to 3 boilers depending on the speed required. When two are in use, she can achieve a maximum speed of 19.8 knots and when all 3 boilers are in use then she can steam at a maximum of 21.8 knots, which equates to 29,500 shaft horsepower.

The vessel is twin Screw, with 2 fixed pitch propellers, she has a single rudder. She is fitted with one bow and one stern thruster, these are propellers located within transverse tunnels below the waterline and allow the vessel to maneuver from one side to another during docking and undocking.

Sky Wonder is also fitted with two retractable stabilizer fins, which can be extended either individually or together depending on the sea conditions. Each fin is 4 metres long and 1.5 metres wide, they are controlled by hydraulic rams and are fed information from gyroscopes which sense the vessels rolling motion. When in use they can reduce the amount of the vessels roll by up to 85% but they have no effect on the ships pitching motion.

Sky Wonder has two anchors, one on each bow. Each anchor weighs a hefty 9 tonnes and they are used at tender ports. Each anchor is fixed to approximately 80 tonnes of anchor chain.

[edit] Incidents

"Trouble prone" Sky Wonder has been involved in many incidents during her career. Some are listed below in chronological order.

January 2002 Lorenzo Lombardo, 21, of Greenacre, died after contracting meningococcal disease during a nine-day Pacific island cruise on the Pacific Sky.

September 23, 2002 - Dianne Brimble, a 42 year-old Australian mother of three, died within 24 hours of boarding Pacific Sky on September 23, 2002. Dianne Brimble died apparently of an overdose of the drug "gamma-hydroxybutyrate", otherwise known as "GHB" or "fantasy". Eight men, Mark Robin Wilhelm, Matthew Graham Slade, Dragan Losic, Petar Vladimir Pantic, Ryan Kym Kuchel, Letterio Silvestri, Luigi Vitale and Sakelaros "Charlie" Kambouris, have been named as persons of interest in the case.^[1] Her semi-naked body was found on the floor of cabin #D182, which belonged to four of the men whom she had met at the ship's disco the previous night.^[2]

January 2005 - Pacific Sky was due to begin a scheduled cruise off the Indian coast, but could not sail after a swarm of jellyfish blocked a cooling water intake. The engines had automatically shut down, leaving the vessel stuck fast at its Brisbane River berth. The shutdown also triggered the automatic dumping of vast quantities of distilled water used by the ship's boilers - and a fresh supply had to be trucked.^[3]

January 08, 2005 - A major air and sea search failed to find any trace of a 24-year-old man who jumped overboard off the Queensland Sunshine Coast. The man jumped despite passengers' attempts to dissuade him. Witnesses said he had been drinking heavily on the last night of a 10-night cruise as the ship headed for Brisbane. Police later boarded the ship on its arrival in Brisbane to interview passengers and crew.^[4]

April 01, 2005 - P&O Cruises was forced to cancel another two Pacific Sky cruises to allow extended work on the ship’s troublesome starboard gearbox. P&O Cruises said the two-month layoff would lead to the cancellation of five cruises but was confident problems would have been fixed in time for its scheduled June 4 cruise.^[5]

August 23, 2005 - A man jumped overboard after an intoxicated argument with his wife. The 52 year old male was rescued in a three hour effort in seas west of Noumea.^[6]

March 07, 2006 - Hundreds of passengers on a seven night cruise were left stranded for about 30 hours after the vessel broke down in the Malacca Strait near Singapore. About five hours after leaving Singapore the ship experienced problems with its starboard engine and came to a halt with more than 1300 passengers on board. Crew tried to fix the problem but were unsuccessful.^[7]

June 25, 2006 - Claims were made by Kasmira Sewpershad, a woman from Auckland, New Zealand that she "was the victim of drink-spiking aboard the ... cruise ship." Ms Sewpershad told Brisbane's Sunday Mail newspaper that she was left "sick and disoriented" after something was slipped into her glass during a 12-day cruise on Pacific Sky in December 2005. A P&O spokesman said procedures had been reviewed and improved so any passenger claiming, or suspected, of having been affected by drugs could request a test and it would be paid for by the cruise line.^[8]

January 18, 2007 - Early in the morning, the Sky Wonder with 1600 passengers ran aground on a sandbar in the Rio Plata, 3 kilometres from the port of Buenos Aires, Argentina. There were no injuries other than a heart problem suffered by a 50 year old male passenger, who was treated ashore. The ship was freed by tugboats at high tide several hours later, so she could reach her destination of Punta Del Este, Uruguay.^[9] She was chartered for CVC Cruises at the time. The grounding was reported to be a navigational error, made by her captain.^[10]

Sky Wonder berthed behind the Sea Diamond at Rhodes, Greece, prior to the Sea Diamond sinking.

March 25, 2008 - Sky Wonder once again ran aground whilst attempting to berth in the Turkish resort of Kusadasi. The port was experiencing moderately high winds and choppy seas at the time, and it appears that the tugs in attendance lost control and allowed the vessel to drift towards the shore, as one of the tugs stopped working and -- according to unverified rumours -- Sky Wonder's reverse gear was out of order. Shortly after, she grounded at the entrance to the adjacent marina. The local tugs were unable to move her (one almost capsizing, and throwing a number of her crew into the water in the process), and assistance was requested from the nearby ports of Izmir & Bodrum. Help arrived next day but was clearly insufficient (just another two similar tugs) so all attempts were unproductive. After lying in a precarious position for more than three days, only some 50 metres from the rocks at the entrance to the marina and some 100 metres from the shore, the Sky Wonder was eventually pulled to safety in the early hours of Saturday March 29, 2008.^{[citation needed]}