Mega cruise ship MSC Seascape has cancelled the remainder of its itinerary after departing Grand Cayman on Thursday night, citing engine troubles.
Seascape, among the first large capacity cruise ships to visit Cayman, was late docking here on Thursday.
Originally set to dock at 9am, it eventually arrived after 2pm.
Field Sutton, Director Communications at MSC Cruise (USA), in an emailed response to Cayman Compass queries about the vessel Friday morning, said MSC Seascape is experiencing a technical issue with one of its engines.
“Though there’s no impact to guest and crew safety or onboard operations, the issue limits the ship’s maximum speed,” the statement said.
It was due to the engine issue that the ship was delayed arriving at Grand Cayman “and continuing on the existing schedule to Ocho Rios prior to returning to Miami would not have been possible,” Sutton explained.
“Instead, the ship will call at Ocean Cay MSC Marine Reserve [Saturday] and return to Miami as scheduled on Sunday. We apologize for the inconvenience and will be giving guests a 50% refund of their cruise fares as a result,” Sutton told the Compass.
MSC Seascape, which launched in December 2022, is touted in a media release on the ship, as “one of the more environmentally advanced cruise ships at sea, featuring a wide range of latest generation environmental technologies and solutions”.
The “world’s newest cruise ship,” it was “one of the largest cruise ships ever to dock in Manhattan,” at more than 170,000 gross tons with a capacity of 5,877 guests, the statement said.
The ship departed New York on 8 Dec. 2022 en route to Miami, where she offered two different 7-night itineraries for her “inaugural season in the Caribbean”.
Captain Francesco Di Palma, Master of MSC Seascape, in a letter to passengers, said the unforeseen technical issue with one of the engines resulted in a power reduction and consequently is affecting the ship’s speed.
“Despite the continuous efforts of our technical team combined with the expertise of the specialized technician who embarked [Thursday] in Grand Cayman, I regretfully have to inform you that the issue has not been resolved and we will be forced to cancel our scheduled call into Ocho Rios, Jamaica,” he said.
Arrival of ship was highly anticipated
While cruise calls are projected to drop this year and next, there was no indication of choppy waters ahead for the industry on Thursday.
With a carrying capacity of 5,800, the MSC Seascape, together with three other cruise ships, brought eager tourists ashore in George Town.
The hefty ship schedule, which saw an overall capacity of 12,000 for the vessels in port, was a welcomed beginning of the year for business owners like David Carmichael, who runs Caribbean Marine Services.
He said having large ships like MSC Seascape presented “no problem” in terms of tendering.
In fact, he said he “can do two of them happily side by side and then maybe one small one” at 3,000 capacity.
Local tenders, he said, can more than adequately handle the volume of passengers that come along with the large ships, as each tender can carry 1,000 passengers.
“We have them at a very maximum capacity to tender 15,000 passengers, what we aim for is 12,000,” Carmichael said, adding that he had already mapped out a tendering plan ahead of Thursday’s call, running five boats.
He said he doesn’t count ships, but instead passengers. He added that, while the port schedule shows a maximum capacity, that does not necessarily mean the ship is full.
Added to this, he said, not all passengers disembark when the ship docks.
He pointed out that Cayman is not unaccustomed to handling big ships, as vessels like the Carnival Horizon and Vista can carry up to 4,900 passengers,
“Some of the big Norwegians, the Escapes and what have you can carry about 5,000… Freedom of the Seas that we were told we could not tender because she was so big… she carries 4,400… it’s not a problem. I mean ultimately… all we’re doing is acting as a conveyor belt… we have to make it simplified,” he contended.
Carmichael said Cayman could still tender the Oasis class ship, with 6,500 capacity.
One of the arguments put forward by the cruise lines, however, when arguing in favour of building a cruise berthing facility in George Town, was that these passengers would not tender.
Speaking in 2019, Royal Caribbean chief Michael Bayley argued that the tendering model was inefficient and old-fashioned and was uncomfortable for guests, particularly older people and children.
Carmichael argued that the size of the ship was not a problem, but contended, “it’s a limiting factor on how quickly you can get them off the ship”.
He likened Thursday’s cruise call to a “normal, average day”.
Cruise reduction a reality
While Carmichael painted the picture of promise, Tourism Minister Kenneth Bryan, speaking in a recent interview on Compass Media’s Gold FM, looked to a reduced future for cruise in Cayman.
Bryan said that while he would like to surpass the previous pre-COVID cruise numbers, that reality is unlikely.
“We’re facing some troubles in respect to cruise,” the minister lamented.
He said the Caymanian people did not want cruise piers and government respects the people’s will on that, however the cruise industry has been building bigger since the COVID lockdown.
“While we were all locked away for those two years, they were building in those big shipyards. So some of those ships are going to surpass the Cayman Islands, which brings our numbers down for projections for 2023 and 2024. So it’s going to be difficult to surpass those numbers of cruises,” he said.
Some people, he said, are happy about that.
“The 2023 and 2024 numbers for cruise compared to 2019 is going to be reduced by 25% to almost 30% over the two-year period… That means that I can’t beat that mark because, the truth is, that people don’t want us to beat that mark,” he said.
One of the goals for this year, he said, is to try to work on determining how to balance out “seasonality, meaning the bumps and the dips” within the cruise industry.
Bryan said he is comfortable with the projections for next year because it’s in line with the middle ground of what the community wants, which is “not too many cruise ship passengers at one time and it also is enough that I think the business owners and the workers are saying, at least we’re getting some money”.
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