Sky Wonder
Encyclopedia
The Atlantic Star (formerly FairSky, Pacific Sky, Sky Princess and Sky Wonder) 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.
for the Italian cruise company Sitmar Cruises
. In keeping with the rest of the Sitmar fleet she was originally named Fairsky and was registered in Liberia
. In September 1988, when Sitmar was purchased by P&O Cruises, she was renamed the Sky Princess for P&O's Princess Cruises subsidiary 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 Skys 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), Pacific Dawn (Nov 2007), Pacific Jewel (2009) and Pacific Pearl (2010).
In May 2006, the transfer from P&O Cruises Australia to Pullmantur Cruises in Spain was made, after a series of 33 seven-day cruises based out of Singapore. Currently registered in Malta
, the Sky Wonder displays Valletta
as her home port. The Italian-built Regal Princess
took Sky Wonders place in the P&O Cruises fleet in mid-2007 as the Pacific Dawn. As of March 2009 the Sky Wonder is laid up in Piraeus. In April 2009 Sky Wonder was renamed Atlantic Star and sailed for the Portuguese market.
In January 2010 it was announced that Pullmantur had sold the vessel to an undisclosed buyer who intends to rename her Mona Lisa II. It is speculated that she would be operating on charter for the German
public, as a vessel named Mona Lisa
previously did.
Atlantic Star is 240.4 metres in length and 29.8 metres in width at her widest point. Her draft is approximately 8.5 metres, but 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 vessel's volume and not the actual weight. Atlantic Star is rated at 46,087 gross tons.
Atlantic Star is powered by steam turbines, and is one of the last steam turbine cruise ships in the world. While at sea she operates on two or three boilers depending on the speed required. When two are in use, she can achieve a maximum speed of 19.8 knots; when all three boilers are in use then she can steam at a maximum of 21.8 knots, which equates to 29,500 shaft horsepower. At full speed she can consume up to 220 tonnes of fuel oil a day.
The vessel has two fixed pitch propellers and 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.
Atlantic Star has 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 vessel's 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 ship's pitching motion.
Atlantic Star has two anchors, one on each bow. Each anchor weighs a hefty nine tonnes and is attached to approximately 80 tonnes of anchor chain.
Pullmantur Cruises
Pullmantur Cruises is a cruise line headquartered in Spain. It began operations in the late 1990s as an offshoot of the Madrid-based travel agency Pullmantur. Pullmantur Cruises, through its parent company, was purchased by Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. in 2006.- Overview :Pullmantur Cruises is the...
fleet, Spain's biggest cruise and tour operator, owned by Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.
History
The Atlantic Star was built in 1984 by Chantiers de Nord et de la Mediterranee of La Seyne-Sur Mer in FranceFrance
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
for the Italian cruise company Sitmar Cruises
Sitmar Cruises
Sitmar Cruises and Sitmar Line were common names for the Societa Italiana Trasporti Marittimi ; an Italian shipping company founded by Russian émigré Alexandre Vlasov. Vlasov operated cargo and passenger services from 1937 until 1988, when it was sold to the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation...
. In keeping with the rest of the Sitmar fleet she was originally named Fairsky and was registered in Liberia
Liberia
Liberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Sierra Leone on the west, Guinea on the north and Côte d'Ivoire on the east. Liberia's coastline is composed of mostly mangrove forests while the more sparsely populated inland consists of forests that open...
. In September 1988, when Sitmar was purchased by P&O Cruises, she was renamed the Sky Princess for P&O's Princess Cruises subsidiary and re-registered in London, England.
In October 2000 she was transferred to P&O Cruises Australia
P&O Cruises
P&O Cruises is a British-American owned cruise line based at Carnival House in Southampton, England, and operated by Carnival UK. Originally a constituent of the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company, P&O Cruises is the oldest cruise line in the world, having operated the world's first...
under the name Pacific Sky. Replacing the 1957-built Fair Princess, Pacific Skys 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
Pacific Sun (ship)
MS Pacific Sun is a Holiday class cruise ship operated by P&O Cruises Australia. At 47,000 tons, Pacific Sun is a medium-sized ship, accommodating up to 1,900 passengers. She was built in 1986 by Kockums Varv, Malmö, Sweden, for Carnival Cruise Lines as MS Jubilee, along with near-sister ship...
(2004), Pacific Dawn (Nov 2007), Pacific Jewel (2009) and Pacific Pearl (2010).
In May 2006, the transfer from P&O Cruises Australia to Pullmantur Cruises in Spain was made, after a series of 33 seven-day cruises based out of Singapore. Currently registered in Malta
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...
, the Sky Wonder displays Valletta
Valletta
Valletta is the capital of Malta, colloquially known as Il-Belt in Maltese. It is located in the central-eastern portion of the island of Malta, and the historical city has a population of 6,098. The name "Valletta" is traditionally reserved for the historic walled citadel that serves as Malta's...
as her home port. The Italian-built Regal Princess
Regal Princess
Pacific Dawn is a cruise ship owned and operated by P&O Cruises Australia. She was built in 1991 by the Fincantieri shipyard in Monfalcone, Italy as Regal Princess...
took Sky Wonders place in the P&O Cruises fleet in mid-2007 as the Pacific Dawn. As of March 2009 the Sky Wonder is laid up in Piraeus. In April 2009 Sky Wonder was renamed Atlantic Star and sailed for the Portuguese market.
In January 2010 it was announced that Pullmantur had sold the vessel to an undisclosed buyer who intends to rename her Mona Lisa II. It is speculated that she would be operating on charter for the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
public, as a vessel named Mona Lisa
Mona Lisa (ship)
MV Mona Lisa is a cruise ship that was last owned by Leonardo Shipping and operated under charter by Lord Nelson Seereisen . She was built in 1966 by the John Brown & Company shipyard in Clydebank, Scotland as the combined ocean liner / cruise ship MS Kungsholm for the Swedish American Line. She...
previously did.
General characteristics
Gross tonnage
Gross tonnage is a unitless index related to a ship's overall internal volume. Gross tonnage is different from gross register tonnage...
, which is actually a measurement of the vessel's volume and not the actual weight. Atlantic Star is rated at 46,087 gross tons.
Atlantic Star is powered by steam turbines, and is one of the last steam turbine cruise ships in the world. While at sea she operates on two or three boilers depending on the speed required. When two are in use, she can achieve a maximum speed of 19.8 knots; when all three boilers are in use then she can steam at a maximum of 21.8 knots, which equates to 29,500 shaft horsepower. At full speed she can consume up to 220 tonnes of fuel oil a day.
The vessel has two fixed pitch propellers and 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.
Atlantic Star has 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 vessel's 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 ship's pitching motion.
Atlantic Star has two anchors, one on each bow. Each anchor weighs a hefty nine tonnes and is attached to approximately 80 tonnes of anchor chain.
Incidents
Atlantic Star 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 BrimbleDianne BrimbleDianne Elizabeth Brimble died aboard a P&O Cruises cruise ship of a drug overdose. She is alleged to have been neglected and received callous treatment at the hands of passengers she was with at the time of taking the drug...
, 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. 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. - January 2005 - Pacific Sky was due to begin a scheduled cruise off the Indian coast, but could not sail after a swarm of jellyfishJellyfishJellyfish are free-swimming members of the phylum Cnidaria. Medusa is another word for jellyfish, and refers to any free-swimming jellyfish stages in the phylum Cnidaria...
blocked a cooling water intake. The engines had automatically shut down, leaving the vessel stuck fast at its Brisbane River berthPinkenba WharfPinkenba Wharf is an Australian wharf, located in within the Port of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The larger ocean going cruise liners that visit the port currently dock at the Pinkenba Wharf, located on the north side of the Brisbane River, north of the Gateway Bridge, due to height...
. 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. - January 8, 2005 - A major air and sea search failed to find any trace of a 24-year-old man who jumped overboard off the QueenslandQueenslandQueensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
Sunshine CoastSunshine Coast, QueenslandThe Sunshine Coast is an urban area in South East Queensland, north of the state capital of Brisbane on the Pacific Ocean coastline. Although it does not have a central business district, by population it ranks as the 10th largest metropolis in Australia and the third largest in...
. 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 BrisbaneBrisbaneBrisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...
. Police later boarded the ship on its arrival in Brisbane to interview passengers and crew. - April 1, 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.
- 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 NoumeaNouméaNouméa is the capital city of the French territory of New Caledonia. It is situated on a peninsula in the south of New Caledonia's main island, Grande Terre, and is home to the majority of the island's European, Polynesian , Indonesian, and Vietnamese populations, as well as many Melanesians,...
. - March 7, 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 SingaporeSingaporeSingapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
. 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. - June 25, 2006 - Claims were made by Kasmira Sewpershad, a woman from AucklandAucklandThe Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with residents, percent of the country's population. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world...
, New ZealandNew ZealandNew Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
that she "was the victim of drink-spikingDate rape drugA date rape drug is any drug that can be used to assist in the execution of a sexual assault, such as date rape. Drugs used to facilitate rape may have sedative, hypnotic, dissociative, and/or amnesiac effects, and can be added to a food or drink without the victim's knowledge.The act of adding...
aboard the ... cruise ship." Ms Sewpershad told Brisbane's Sunday MailThe Sunday Mail (Brisbane)The Sunday Mail is Brisbane's only Sunday newspaper. The Sunday Mail is published in tabloid format, comprising several sections that can be extracted and read separately.-Publishing:...
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. - 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 AiresBuenos AiresBuenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, ArgentinaArgentinaArgentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
. 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 EstePunta del EstePunta del Este is a resort town on the Atlantic Coast in the Maldonado Department of southeastern Uruguay. It is located on the intersection of Route 10 with Route 39, directly southeast of the department capital Maldonado and about east of Montevideo...
, UruguayUruguayUruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
. She was chartered for CVC Cruises at the time. The grounding was reported to be a navigational error, made by her captain. - March 25, 2008 - Sky Wonder once again ran aground whilst attempting to berth in the Turkish resort of KusadasiKusadasiKuşadası is a resort town on Turkey's Aegean coast and the center of the seaside district of the same name in Aydın Province. Kuşadası lies at a distance of to the south from the region's largest metropolitan center of İzmir, and from the provincial seat of Aydın situated inland. Its primary...
. The port was experiencing moderately high winds and choppy seas at the time. One of the tugs in attendance malfunctioned, and subsequently control was lost, allowing the vessel to drift towards the shore. According to unverified rumours, Sky Wonder's reverse gear was out of order at the time. Shortly after drifting, she grounded at the entrance to the adjacent marina. The local tugs were unable to move her, with one almost capsizing and throwing a number of her crew into the water in the process. Assistance was requested from the nearby ports of IzmirIzmirIzmir is a large metropolis in the western extremity of Anatolia. The metropolitan area in the entire Izmir Province had a population of 3.35 million as of 2010, making the city third most populous in Turkey...
and BodrumBodrumBodrum is a port city in Muğla Province, in the southwestern Aegean Region of Turkey. It is located on the southern coast of Bodrum Peninsula, at a point that checks the entry into the Gulf of Gökova. The site was called Halicarnassus of Caria in ancient times and was famous for housing the...
. Help arrived the next day in the form of two similar tugs, however, these too proved insufficient, with all attempts at recovery being unproductive. After lying in a precarious position for more than three days, only some fifty metres from the rocks at the entrance to the marina and one-hundred metres from the shore, the Sky Wonder was eventually pulled to safety in the early hours of Saturday March 29, 2008.
External links
- http://www.pullmanturcruises.com/PT/AtlanticStar/sp1211199478432.html
- http://www.ssmaritime.com/sitmar2.htm