Post by Dave on Oct 10, 2020 6:50:33 GMT
The Volendam, Westerdam, Zaandam, Azura Cruise Ships 9th Oct 2020
One very big casualty of covic-19 has been the cruise ship industry and as a result Torbay has seen a good number of cruise ships anchored in the Bay. Carnival Magic,Valor,Ventura and the Aurora have all recently spent time here and I am sure will be back again at some point. Torbay, Weymouth and Southampton and many other locations have all become temporary homes for many of these wonderful floating hotels.
I believe each one has between 100 to 180 crew on board although it is costing the cruise company’s money to keep the vessels in what they call ‘warm storage’, it would cost far more to put the ships into ‘cold storage’ without crew or engines running, due to the procedures to re-start the ship’s engines, generators, water and sanitisation systems.
The Queen Mary 2 has been in the Bay a number of weeks now and has recently been joined by the Volendam, Westerdam, Zaandam and Azura. The latter one looks very impressive. Due to not being able to go out until late morning and not having a great deal of time, I decided to view the ships as close to home as possible and decided on broadsands.
Just as I got there it started raining so my photos were not as good as I had hoped, mind you just after I took them I could hardly see the ships due to the sweeping rain going across the Bay. But I was glad I made the effort as we never know how long each ship will stay with us.
Cruise ships are nothing new to Torbay, but we only ever see them one at a time and full of passengers and maybe only three or four a year. While it is great to have the opportunity to see these wonderful ships, I hope the day is not too far away when they are able to get back into full action.
