Costa Pacifica - emergency repair drydocking - January/February 2013

Following the severe damage done last week in Marseille after extremely gusty high winds slammed a marker buoy into our side, the Pacifica will be requiring drydock time. The buoy collision was totally unavoidable, only 10 or so days earlier another large passenger ship, Napoleon Bonaparte, had her stern ripped when she was slammed into the quay during docking. We were turning with the pilot aboard when the marker buoy broke free from its chain and was literally thrown into our side.

From what I could gather when talking to senior crew, she will go ahead with her Christmas and New Year's cruises as planned but the schedule could be disrupted for 2-4 weeks after that.

She has 2 large 20-30m slashes in her hull plating and associated internal damage on deck 1 and 0. She also has damaged bow thrusters due to the buoy collision, so they too require urgent repair (from Marseille last week we required tug assistance for docking/undocking).

The temporary plate repairs carried out in Marseille and Palermo have made her safe to sail but they are by no means permanent patches.

So if anyone is booked on Pacifica in the next couple months, you might get notified that the cruise is cancelled. It is currently down to logistics as to when the drydocking will take place and not if it will take place.

We saw the repair plates on the cruise this week, and wondered what had happened. Thanks for the info!

Did she eventually go to the drydock?

Apparently her February 2013 schedule wasn't affected at all.