326-Meter Norwegian Breakaway Completes Dry Docking at Damen Shiprepair Brest

The 326-meter, 145,655 tonne Norwegian Breakaway recently completed 11 days in dry-dock at Damen Shiprepair Brest for scheduled maintenance and refurbishment.

The main objective of the dry docking was to conduct mechanical work on the ship’s two ABB Azipods in close cooperation with ABB. The work included repairing the shaft bearings and replacing the slewing seals requiring the removal of both propellers.

At the same time as the azipod work, Damen Shiprepair Brest technicians worked with personnel from Brunvoll AS to undertake maintenance of the vessel’s three bowthrusters, as well as dismantling, maintaining and then refitting the two Fincantieri stabilisers.

The hull was also repainted, which involved the usual paintworks plus the decorative artwork on the vessel’s forward topsides.

While in the shipyard’s 420-meter number 3 dry dock, large quantities of the carpets inside the cruise ship were removed and replaced by a contractor.

Laurent Salou, Project Manager at Damen Shiprepair Brest, commented: “I truly believe that all the personnel at Damen Shiprepair Brest really appreciated the opportunity to work on Norwegian Breakaway as the collaboration with the ship’s staff was more than excellent during the entire dry-docking period. I’m personally really proud of the work which has been achieved by my colleagues, and honoured to have worked on such a notable project.”

ABB equipped Norwegian Breakaway with two 17.5 MW Azipod XO propulsion units, providing the ship with a top speed of 22.5 knots and a cruising speed of 21.5 knots.

“The client chose us for this project not only because we are capable of handling a ship of this size, but also because we are close to the major cruise terminal at Southampton, which was its last port of call. They were also very satisfied with the works that we performed on the Norwegian Epic in 2015 and I am pleased to be able to report that the client was very happy with performance of the DSBr workers and the yard on this project as well,” Salou added.

The Norwegian Breakaway left Damen Shiprepair Brest on May 8.