Vigor’s Portland Shipyard completes emergency propulsion repairs to cruise vessel Carnival Panorama

Carnival Cruise Line’s 135,900 gt 2019-built Carnival Panorama completed a drydocking for emergency propulsion repairs at US west coast repairer Vigor Portland, in Oregon, and returned to service two days before Christmas.

The 4,000 passenger capacity vessel had been experiencing an issue which had been affecting its maximum cruising speed in early November 2023 and drydocked in mid-November to effect repairs.

Planning an emergency drydocking of such a large vessel is no easy thing from a logistics point of view and was such a case with regard to Carnival Panorama. To allow the vessel to reach the shipyard on Swan Island, in Portland, the owners’ had to take off the top of the cruise vessel’s funnel, so that she could pass under the numerous bridges that cross the Colombia River, from the Pacific Ocean to the inland shipyard. Once repairs were complete, the top of the funnel was replaced before Carnival Panorama sailed to her homeport of Long Beach, California, to start a seven-night cruise to the Mexican Riviera on 23 December.

The unscheduled drydocking saw the cancellation of six cruises for the vessel.

Meanwhile undergoing repair at Vigor’s Portland shipyard over the Christmas and New Year period were two military vessels:

• USNS John Lewis – 22,515 ton displacement 2022-built naval replenishment tanker, owned and operated by the US Navy’s Military Sealift Command (MSC). This vessel is the first of a six-ship new class of vessel
• Pacific Tracker – 19,112 dwt 1965-built Tracking & Telemetry ship owned by the US government and in service with the US Missile Defence Agency.  Pacific Tracker is operated by commercial shipowner TOTE Services and was converted for her present role in 2011 from the dry cargo vessel Mormacdraco