To Shape Up, Ship Pulled Out

Instructions for adding 151 cabins, swimming pools, a water fountain, restaurants, two suspension bridges and a bungee-trampoline to a giant cruise ship:

1. Slice ship into two.

2. Insert new midsection.

3. Weld pieces together.

That’s how engineers in Europe’s largest port lengthened Royal Caribbean International’s 916-foot cruise ship Enchantment of the Seas by nearly 8%, to 989 feet long.

Project director Harold Linssen said the two-month job actually wasn’t as easy as 1-2-3.

“This is the first time a cruise ship of this size is being extended in such a short period of time,” he said over the din of grinding metal and hoisting cranes.

“The ship will grow to 81,500 tons, and the parts will be realigned with an accuracy of 10 to 15 millimeters” -- about half an inch -- “to be welded together again.”

The price tag, about $54.5 million, was less than a tenth the cost of buying a new ship with similar features.

Royal Caribbean wants to take advantage of the growing popularity of luxury cruises, especially among young people. In 2004, nearly 10.5 million people took a vacation cruise, an increase of nearly 40% from 2001, according to figures on the Cruise Lines International Assn.’s website.

Royal Caribbean spokeswoman Jaye Hilton said the makeover catered to younger travelers who wanted more from a high-seas vacation than tanning on the deck.

The average age of passengers on Royal Caribbean’s 19-ship fleet is 42, compared with an industry average of 50, she said.

“The experience of the ship will be completely different,” Hilton said. “There will be a jogging track that takes you over suspension bridges and the first bungee-trampolines at sea.”

The 8-year-old ship has gained a 70-foot-long centerpiece, which took a year to build in Finland. Equal in height to a 9 1/2 -story building, it arrived in the Netherlands by barge, after a voyage of 1,430 miles through the Baltic and the North Sea.

After sailing to Rotterdam, which has one of the largest dry docks in the world, the Enchantment of the Seas was set in a giant framework of laser-adjusted braces, hydraulic pumps and a system of rollers that ensured the pieces would remain aligned when separated.

Once the ship was in place, welders began slicing through its 360-foot steel circumference, freeing an 11,300-ton front section.

That was the most nerve-racking part of the job: A miscalculation could have toppled the ship.

Cutting the vessel in half took six days, with 16 men working shifts around the clock.

The freed section was moved at a laborious 3 feet an hour to make way for the 3,000-ton midsection, waiting at the side to be rolled in for insertion. It already had been outfitted with cabins and amenities.

The three pieces were made whole in mid-June after 15 days of welding and the connecting of 1,300 pipes, ducts and cables. The revamped cruise ship returns to work this month.

Hilton said the ship would make short cruises from ports on the U.S. East Coast until late September, then shift to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for year-round service in the Caribbean.