{"id":22584,"date":"2016-06-24T08:03:26","date_gmt":"2016-06-24T15:03:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/first-cruise-ship-set-for-northwest-passage-passes-inspection\/"},"modified":"2016-06-24T08:03:26","modified_gmt":"2016-06-24T15:03:26","slug":"first-cruise-ship-set-for-northwest-passage-passes-inspection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/first-cruise-ship-set-for-northwest-passage-passes-inspection\/","title":{"rendered":"First cruise ship set for Northwest Passage passes inspection"},"content":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE<\/strong> \u2014 The Coast Guard is gearing up for the inaugural voyage of a luxury cruise ship through the Northwest Passage and said Thursday the Crystal Serenity easily passed a routine inspection.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything was in fairly good working order,\u201d said Lt. Comm. Nicholas Neely.<\/p>\n

The 820-foot ship will depart Aug. 16 from Seward for the 32-day trip to New York City, traveling from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic by way of the Arctic Ocean. It will carry more than 1,700 passengers and crew.<\/p>\n

It will cross the Gulf of Alaska, travel north through the Bering Sea and reach Nome on Aug. 21. The luxury cruise ship will continue through the Bering Strait into the Chukchi and Beaufort seas before crossing into Canadian waters. Stops in Greenland are scheduled before the ship turns south and reaches New York on Sept. 17.<\/p>\n

The voyage is of high interest to Coast Guard officials in Alaska, who until a few years ago were not overly concerned with Arctic waters because they were mostly frozen and free of ship traffic.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pretty sure that since this is an inaugural trip, there\u2019s going to be a lot of people checking its progress daily to make sure it doesn\u2019t run into any problems,\u201d Neely said.<\/p>\n

Inspectors in Juneau over five hours Wednesday watched crew members simulate an \u201cabandon ship\u201d order. They demonstrated their ability to direct passengers and load and lower lifeboats within 30 minutes. Part of the drill is making sure people who speak different languages are understood.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some standard hand signals that can be used to direct passengers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Another drill simulated a ship fire.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe watched their fire crews respond to a fire in an engineering space,\u201d Neely said. \u201cThey got suited up in their protective suits, took out fire hoses, actually tested their installed firefighting system. Everything was great on that front too.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Crystal Serenity was built with an ice-strengthened hull that\u2019s one level below an icebreaker, Neely said.<\/p>\n

The cruise ship expects to move in ice-free water will carry marine pilots who can navigate through ice. Crystal Cruises spokesman Paul Garcia said the ship will be accompanied by an escort vessel with ice-breaking capability and helicopters that can scout for ice.<\/p>\n

The cruise line is taking reservations for a 2017 Northwest Passage trip Garcia said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE \u2014 The Coast Guard is gearing up for the inaugural voyage of a luxury cruise ship through the Northwest Passage and said Thursday the Crystal Serenity easily passed a routine inspection. \u201cEverything was in fairly good working order,\u201d said Lt. Comm. Nicholas Neely. The 820-foot ship will depart Aug. 16 from Seward for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-22584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22584"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=22584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}