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Cellpic Sunday – Cruise Ship Maintenance Never Stops

Cruise ship paint touchup.

When we first started cruising, I noticed cruise ship maintenance was ongoing. As guests, we’ve seen many paint touchups and on the Norwegian Bliss, we saw welders adding pieces to the decking in front of the observation lounge. Many crew members have little or no interaction with the passengers, and whose only job is to keep the ship looking its best. This worker’s job for the day was to touch up the paint on the superstructure that extends outward above deck 14.

At Coxen Hole, Honduras I stepped out on the balcony for a few moments to capture a photo of the island port and was surprised to see this piece of equipment and its operator in front of the balcony in the next cabin. Previously, I’d noticed a yellow cable running along a tray that extended slightly from the floor of our balcony structure. I’d wondered what it was for. Seeing this specialized piece of equipment turned on that lightbulb in my brain. The cable is part of the propulsion system that moves the structure along the track. As the carriage moves toward the bow or front of the ship, it rolls up the yellow cable and lays down a black cable behind it. When going back toward the stern, it rolls up the black cable and lays down the yellow cable again.

Breakaway Equipment-2
Two maintenance “carts” service the upper floors.

After we exited the ship, I looked up to see there were two such powered carriages. The lower one services deck 14, our deck for the week. The taller, thinner upper carriage appears to be for maintenance of the highest superstructure on the ship. My first thought is that the specialized cart outside our balcony could be moved from deck to deck. From the ground, I could see that these carts only service the areas just above those tallest decks.

Breakaway Equipment-3
A broader view of the ship with carts in place.

While we went ashore, workers on the ship were busy doing their jobs, cleaning, maintaining, and even upgrading features on the ship.

About the photos: All of these images were captured with my Samsung S23U in pro mode. I use pro mode more often as it gives me a DNG file and a JPG file for each image. When I import the files into Lightroom Classic, the software is smart enough to ignore the JPG file and only import the DNG file. The file is larger than the JPG file, but it contains so much more data. Lightroom Classic and Luminar Neo can extract a wider dynamic range and improved details from those DNG files. I didn’t use the pro mode on my S20U as it was much more work to extract the DNG files than on the S23U. I am now using much more of the capability of this camera and the images I download are the better for it. All three of these images are posted in 2K HD on my Flickr site in an album here. You can also click on any of the images above to pixel-peep it specifically.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment. Oh, and, you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner

30 comments

  10. I believe on some liners – maybe all of them – the crew exceed the number of guests? Your image is a wonderful reminder that what for many of us is a lovely holiday puts food on the table of the families of hardworking men and women!

    Reply

    • Some of the smaller ships in the luxury class with passenger counts of less than 250, have crew numbers that exceed the guest numbers. The Viking Mars, for example, has a passenger capacity of 455, and a crew capacity of 465. Most are just slightly under 50 percent.
      On the larger ships, like the Norwegian Breakaway we were sailing on, the guest capacity is almost 4,000. The crew component is 1657 according to Wikipedia.

      Reply

  12. You are the expert cruiser. That is a huge ship. I never have seen anyone working on maintenance on a cruise ship. They don’t want to lose a bit of time in dry dock. I just can’t get over how big they look in your pictures. 🙂

    Reply

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