While at home the phone rang and h/r dept asked if I would like to fly to Monfalcone in Northern Italy for the the final commissiong stages of M/V Grand Princess GRT 109,000 tons at her time of launch the largest cruise liner in the world able to safety carry 2600 passengers and a compliment of 1200 crew. I flew out on 13/03/98 to assist the bosun in indenting stores for deck and safety, flying home for 4 days to attend a P&O 2 day firefighting and familiarisation course with the 5 other safety PO'S ie the main deck fire party with the Safety officer 1st engineer and 2nd vetilation officer ie the assesment party. Returning to the Fincanteri ship yard we set about getting our areas of responsibility ready for the shake down cruise and mca certification. We dry docked at Trieste after shake down then returned to Monfalcone ship yard for more drills and fine tuning all the training and familirisation had paid off and we sailed for Barcelona for maiden voyage. Again like P&0 our work revolved around safety of ship, passengers and planned maintenance of GDM , BOATS, and FIRE GEAR. also rig and derig gangways rig the pilot ladder and drive tenders at boat ports with the rigging of ships tender platforms . A very responsible job.
Grand Princess at anchor first port of call Monaco for boating ops. Photo shows the sheer scale of an opulant 330million pound state of the art cruise ship. Also the starboard tender platforms turned out and three ships tenders
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