SEVENTH CRUISE SHIP IN TORBAY LAUNCHED BY OPRAH WINFREY!!

There are now 4 ‘Holland America Line’ cruise ships anchored up in the Bay of Torbay. The Westerdam, Zaandam, Volendam and the latest of the ships, the MS Nieuw Statendam which arrived into the Bay just after lunchtime on Friday (16th October).
MS Nieuw Statendam is one of Holland America Line’s ‘Pinnacle-class’ cruise ships. Holland America Line is a division of Carnival Corporation & plc. Debuting in December 2018, she is the second of the liners ‘Pinnacle-class’, making her the sister ship to MS Koningsdam.
Nieuw Statendam was ordered 19th December 2014, laid down 20th March 2017 and launched 6th December 2017. She was christened by Oprah Winfrey on 2 February 2019 at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after performing a three-night sailing to Half Moon Cay hosted by Winfrey and Gayle King. She has 12 passenger decks, a length of 299.75 metres (983.4 ft), a draft of 8 metres (26 ft), and a beam of 35 metres (115 ft). She is powered by a diesel-electric genset system, with four MaK engines, each producing 12.6 MW (16,900 hp) to produce a total output of 50.4 megawatts (67,600 hp).

Torbay’s coastline is currently being used as an area for numerous vessels to remain in a state of ‘warm storage’ where a minimal crew is left aboard to keep the vessel in full running order to avoid completely shutting down the ship’s engines and putting the vessel into a state of ‘cold storage’ where all onboard facilities would be totally ‘shut down’. Cold storage is a last resort for cruise lines due to the extremely high costs involved in re-starting all ships systems, including, engines, water sanitization plant, air conditioning and other navigational systems.

Nieuw Statendam usually sails Caribbean itineraries from Fort Lauderdale during the winter and re-positions in the spring to Europe to cruise from Amsterdam to Northern Europe and from Rome around the Mediterranean in the summer. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic now finds itself in the Bay of Torbay with 3 other ships from the HAL brand. This brings to total number of cruise ships in the bay now to seven. Four of these are HAL ships, two are P & O ships and one is Cunard’s luxury transatlantic ocean liner – The Queen Mary 2.