Mein Schiff 2 refuses to Dock in Antigua

Tourisim officials, tour operators and vendors were left disappointed yesterday as the captain of the cruise ship, Mein Schiff 2, operated by TUI Cruises refused to dock the vessel in St.John's. Apparently concerned about the depth of the water in the berth assigned, the captain brought the ship into the Harbour but as shown in the Marinetraffic.com screenshot and picture below made a loop and returned to deeper water offshore.

Track of Mein Schiff 2 from Marinetraffic.com

Mein Schiff 2 moored outside St.John's Harbour

The ship remained offshore (just west of West Indies Oil jetty), while behind the scenes attempts were made to convince the ship to return. When these negotiations failed, the ship departed for Phillipsburg, St.Maarten its next scheduled port of call at 11:30am arriving there at 4:50pm.

According to the agent, Brysons Shipping cruise ship schedule, the berth assigned for Mein Schiff 2 was the Nevis Street pier (South) alongside Celebrity Eclipse on the North. The Heritage Quay berths were allocated to Oceana of P&O Cruises (South) and MSC Musica (North) which arrived around 1:30pm later in the day.

When Mein Schiff 2 last visited 2 weeks ago, it was scheduled to berth at Nevis Street Pier (North) but actually berth at Heritage Quay (South) alongside MSC Musica on the North. Celebrity Eclipse docked at Nevis Street Pier (North) alongside the Royal Fleet Auxillary ship Wave Knight on the South. Given this previous arrangement, I guess the captain expected the same. Let's hope everything gets sorted out in time for its next visit so that the cruisers can get to enjoy our beautiful island.

MSC Musica, Mein Schiff 2 and RFA Wave Knight in St.Johns 6-Jan-2014.

Following are the ships statistics from marinetraffic.com and cruisetimetables.com

Ship	Length (m)	Breadth (m)	Draught (m)	Passengers	Crew
Mein Schiff 2	264	36	8.5	2114	909
Celebrity Eclipse	317	48	8.9	3000	1500
Oceana	261.2	32.3	8.4	2272	900
MSC Musica	292	34	7.6	3013	987