Life in dry dock

Does the saying Fish Out of Water say something to you? Quite literally. We are out of the water for real this time. Our beloved Queen of the Seas is sitting on massive Lego blocks with wheels under them.

Being in dry dock means the electricity comes and goes as it pleases. Ok, it's not that simple, but me, a simple user sees only that much. We had to shut down most of the hospital deck, the lights on the corridors and even the power in the cabins - meaning our wedding cake in the freezer started to defrost itself :( Oh, and it's VERY hot! The ship heats up in no time and since we cannot open the windows and portholes, we are basically boiling inside. :(

My clock melted!!!

We weren't alone though in the dry dock; several other vessels were docked there around us. In fact, one new arrival forced us to shift positions. Here are some pictures, let me just say one thing: these ships are HUGE when they are out of the water!

The ships are "standing" on these little blocks with wheels. It's hard to believe they don't tip on either side, apparently the weight of the vessel is enough to keep them firmly placed on these rolling Lego blocks. :)

That tube was our rubbish drop. The opening is normally where we hook up the gangway to. In the bottom you can see another opening: that square cut is where they removed the AC unit and installed the new one. Pretty cool!

The ship from the front.

Here you can see how tall is our lady. That's me in the front in case you didn't recognised me :)

This portable gangway served as our exit and entrance to the ship. Let me tell ya, it moved an awful lot!

That's me too, showing you the size of the ship from the back.

 BEFORE-AFTER PICTURES :)

Am I strong or what??? :)

Yes, I was under the ship jumping in to save the day as a few Lego blocks rolled away :)

TITANIC

Who can forget the famous scene with Leo and Kate at the bow? Well, Darren and I wore our wedding outfits for this special photo shoot...

And here is a very nice professional video that my good friend, Ryan Chen made for Mercy Ships. Enjoy!

Into the Dry as in VERY DRY DOCK

We had a few fun days in Tenerife and while most people were busy visiting a fast food chain with a golden arch and terrible, crappy and expensive food, we went out to a local restaurant and had Tapas, Paella, Sangria and other great local dishes and drinks. :)

This week was also set aside to lighten the ship before we go into dry dock. For the first time ever we saw this note on the Captain's notice board: USE MORE WATER! Waaaaa-hoooooo! No more 2 min showers! :)

Landrovers, containers, even life rafts and anything that's "heavy but not screwed on" was removed so that we can sail over to Gran Canaria for the actual dock yard work. The wake up call came at 3.30am and by 5am we were on our way. As you can see we had some nice big waves between the 2 islands:

Leaving Tenerife at 5am

Here are some more shots as we were getting close to the harbour:

Darren was working on the Satellite dish as we were sailing.

Now you can see how many M-SC containers are in each port :)

Big boat vs. little boat. Size DOES matter! :)

The ship needs to sail towards that tiny concrete bay, then be turned around by 3 tug boats so that we would back into that special berth. 2 smaller boats came with the massive mooring lines and quite literraly they pulled us in.

Once we were deep into that bay, the little tug boats manuevered out and pushed us all the way in. Then the fun part for us, spectaculars stopped for a while as the divers took over. They had to go under to ensure the ship is coming in straight and will lie on the proper blocks. We had lunch and what we noticed was that our ship started to rise. A few hours later the wooden platform we were sitting on came all the way up. Lazy seagulls showed up right away to snatch the tiny fish and other sea creatures that were caught up in our platform-rise.

Water height when we pulled in.

Water height 0 as the platform rose.

We went outside again only to notice 3 yellow TRACTORS to come close. We didn't see much of what was happening right under us, but the captain said that they were attaching some ropes with the intention of actually PULLING THE SHIP! A 16.000 tons ship!!! Ok, we were on wheels, but still. They kept on trying without much luck so eventually a fourth tractor was called and amazingly, they were able to make the ship move! We had to stop a few times, but soon enough we made it all the way to the end of the dock yard.

That's all we could see from the top looking down. 3 tractors making us move.
HOW COOL IS THAT???

Here is one picture of the ship in dry dock. How is life in dry dock and how the ship looks like from the bottom up? Well, that's in the next post :)

Both Darren and I were taking pictures and making videos from deck 8 as we were coming into dry dock and we managed to work together for the first time to produce this clip: