Page 30: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (December 1999)

Great Ships of 1999

Builder Kvaerner-Masa Yards

Vessel name Voyager of the Seas

Vessel type Cruise Ship

Owner Royal Caribbean

By David Tinsley

Slipping out through the Finnish archipel- ago on a Sunday morning at the end of Octo- ber, Voyager of the Seas cut a figure of unprecedented scale in the passenger ship sector, symbolizing both the surging growth in the cruise market and the fertility of the

Finnish maritime technology cluster.

The 137,200-gt cruise ship, whose tower- ing superstructure and an air draft of 208-ft. (63.5-m) belies a relatively tender draft of just over 28-ft. (8.8-m), marks a new high- point in the industry's unerring endeavors to foster long-term sustainable business devel- opment in the seagoing leisure sector.

Although the shipbuilding price from

Kvaerner Masa-Yards was around $500 mil- lion, about seven times the current cost of a

VLCC, Royal Caribbean estimates that its overall project expenditure in bringing Voy- ager of the Seas to the market has been clos- er to $700 million. The group's overall fleet expansion program is no less astounding than its record-breaking new cruise liner, with $3.6 billion being ploughed into new- build investments spanning deliveries up to the summer of 2002.

At a time when European shipbuilding is facing intensified competition from the Ori- ent in fields of construction it has hitherto dominated, as demonstrated by Japanese and

Korean successes in the cruise ship and

RoRo passenger (RoPax) ferry segments,

Voyager of the Seas is a powerful reminder of Nordic maritime industrial capabilities.

Quality and contractual performance have long been the watchwords of Kvaerner

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Maritime Reporter/Engineering News