Oasis docking not plain sailing

The worlds largest cruise ship, Oasis of the Seas arrives into Southampton on the 15th of this month and has proved to be a massive challenge for the Ports Operation team at Royal Caribbean.

So much so that it has took 3 years of planning for this 1 day visit.

The Oasis is so long it took up 2 terminals in Barcelona, the first time this has happened, an advantage to this is that it allowed embarkation check-in desks to be doubled from 50 to 100.

The Oasis, built for Caribbean cruising has been doing a mini season out of Barcelona and all the European ports have been tricky but none more than Southampton. For instance tidal changes in Southampton are upto 4.8 metres where as the Caribbean tidal changes are 20-30cms at most.

When boarding the Oasis the doors are quite low down – either on deck two, or quite high up on deck five. It is preferred that passengers enter here into the Royal Promenade, but the only way would be to build scaffolding attached to a 42-metre ramp, which just isn’t feasible. Instead, passengers will walk up a small ramp which then enables them to descend below the quayside and then enter the ship at deck two.

At precisely 23.59, when there are no other ships in the harbour the Oasis will be able to sail to the ‘upper swinging ground’ the harbours deepest point where it will be able to perform a 3 point turn and then set sail for Port Everglades.

If you are on this sailing you will be pleased to know that there will be 76 check-in desks, about 20 more than normal.

And if you are on this cruise or going to the docks to see it make sure you take plenty of photos as it could be a while before the worlds largest ship is back in the UK.

Did you know that the ship is the length of 4 football pitches and the width of 8 London double decker buses bumper to bumper, with 16 passenger decks that is some mighty square footage.