17 March 2016; Marghera, Italy.

Last night we were all ordered off the ship again for our second planned black out happening. This time they wanted the ship completely empty to see if all the Fire screen doors would close and then stay closed without anybody still walking through them. The Cruise Director had organized a movie in the Canteen of the shipyard which is large enough to accommodate the complete crew. Still many went to the little café outside the gate again and it almost burst out of its seams with at least two crewmembers per square foot of café floor space. I am now sure the proprietor can retire early after a few more of these Black outs. And he/she still has the Seabourn Encore, A Carnival ship and the TBA-dam coming after us, all with their required blackouts.

Thus far the crew has only been dry-sweeping. Today it was bucket day issue for Housekeeping and now the real anti dust battle starts.

Today we had a glorious day. The cold northerly wind disappeared and the sun shone making it a beautiful early spring day. All the yard people took advantage of it and moved their cutting and sawing work to the outside where they were not hampered by the dust flying around.  Although large areas of the ship are now so far advanced that there is only fine tuning work going on, but in some areas there is still work done with wall panels and the fine dust penetrates everywhere. Every time Housekeeping thinks they have things under control, they have not and the cleaning starts all over again.

This is a state of the art LED screen and can be seen under nearly every angle.

This morning was also the first time I saw the large screen in the Lido Pool area being switched on. Not much more than a lot of red but it is working. Eventually there will be Movies under the Stars screened here and as the Lido deck has two levels with dedicated seating area’s I think it will be a great success. With Gelati’s (The ice cream parlor), Dive Inn (Hamburger Bar), New York Deli and a Beverage Bar on each level it has the potential of becoming a very popular spot on board.

The Low Level Lighting Monitoring Panel on the Bridge.

What is a lot more technical and on occasion causing some loud Italian noises is the installation of the Low Level Emergency Lighting.  In case of a black out or other mayhem which will cause the regular lights to fail, the LLL will come on and clearly indicate the escapes routes to safety. Every corridor and every staircase has these strips and the sub-contractors who are busy with installing them have to work through the locations where everybody else is working. As you cannot coordinate the progress of everything all the time, there is occasionally a “discussion” going about who should be here and there first or later. As the LLL is a very important safety system it is controlled from the bridge. Not so much to switch it on, it does that by itself when the pertinent alarms go off, but to keep an eye on which sections might fail. With trolleys in the ship, water being spilled and strips being hit, there is nearly always a section under repair and then it is handy to have a screen which tells you where the fault is located.

I thought I will do a Selfie this time. This is the room dedicated to things related to Sit & be Fit. etc.etc.

Today also the installing of the Green House Spa on Deck 09 started. During the night all the torture equipment for the Gymnasium was lifted on board and now it is being fitted to the deck. Also the spa Ladies are starting to bring their treatment potions and everything else on board and that will keep them going for quite a while as it is a very large area. There are in total 16 treatment rooms for massage/ facials /body treatments  etc. and then we have all the other areas such as the Hair Dressing Salon, Sauna’s, Steam Rooms, Wellness areas, etc. etc. For the first time we will also have a dedicated Barber salon on board with a licensed Barber.

One of the serving stations in the Lido. The decoration is now being installed.

The Lido Restaurant is nearing its final outfitting stages. It is now called the Lido Market and for a good reason. There are now a large number of stations which each are specialized in serving one item. Not just Hot & Cold, but under names such as Homestead, Breadboard, Wild Harvest (salads), Etc. Etc.  I am greatly in favor of these stations as it reduces the standing in line enormously. You just go to the section that you fancy and get served straight away.

This is smoke with a Capital S.

A thing which we only see in dry dock or as now during a new-build is a Smoke Extraction Test for the Atrium. Although an Atrium is beautiful to have, from a safety point of view it is a difficult area. As it goes up three or more decks, smoke can freely travel from one deck to another. If this would happen in an emergency then there is a Smoke Extraction System which sucks away the smoke making it possible for people to still use the escape routes around it. So today at noon time, the Atrium was filled up with Stage Smoke until nothing could be seen and then the Smoke Extraction System was switched on. It worked well, after a few minutes we could see three decks down again.

And this is the same photo location after the Smoke Extraction fans did their work.