Voyages of Discovery’s ship problem

Basically, in a nutshell, the ship Discovery developed an engine fault whilst cruising the Amazon in March 2008. At that time, no mention of the failing was placed on the company website. A well known and respected cruise journalist was aboard her in April 2008 and mentioned in his blog about the engine fault and that he had received $200 OBC and a percentage towards a future cruise.

Roll forward to May 2008, my agent contatced me to ask if I knew about the engine fault. At the time I did not (the blog entry was found by me when hunting down information about the problem). I placed a mention about the fault on the cruise discussion board that I administer (link at foot of this email).

This then brought a few new members who shared their experiences about this fault. Itineraries messed up etc. So over the last few weeks we have been following the ship in the Baltic and doing Norwegian Fjords, to see if the problem still existed and how it was impacting the cruises.

We soon discovered that the ship was running extremely slow, averaging 14 knots flat out.

Still nothing on the website.

So I contacted Lee Hayhurst at TTG and Jane Archer at Telegraph Online to see what they could find out.

Lee’s article of August 15th…

http://www.ttglive.com/c/portal/layout?p_l_id=61139&CMPI_SHARED_articleId=1111105&CMPI_SHARED_ImageArticleId=1111105&CMPI_SHARED_articleIdRelated=1111105&CMPI_SHARED_ToolsArticleId=1111105&CMPI_SHARED_CommentArticleId=1111105

Jane’s article of Aug 20th…

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/cruises/2590442/Discovery-engine-problem-to-be-fixed.html

You will notice the date of the engine fix being shifted on these reports….and that David Yellow admits in Janes article that the engine repair had been attempted 3 times without success. The engine has been out for 6 months by this time.

The thread I started on my discussion board is here…

http://www.cruisingtalk.com/voyages-discovery/15222-voyages-discovery-m-v-discovery-severe-engine-problems-continuing.html

Over 13000 hits in 2 weeks.

The ship is about to embark on a repositioning to Antarctica on November 16th. We have members on that cruise as does my agent. They are seriously worried about the fitness of the ship for such a voyage, not to mention the weather extremes that area of the world has and the ice.

I have suggested that people write to VoD asking for written assurances that the engine will be fixed before the cruise leaves and to get in touch with ABTA if that assurance is not forthcoming as they may wish to cancel and there is a question then about refunding deposits etc.

David Yellow has gone away til at least September 2nd, despite knowing the ship was not fixed. Despite the media interest there is still no announcement on the company website about this ship’s engine and the fluctuating AIS which is a legal requirement under maritime law.

The ship has been inspected by Polish & UK authorities this week and she has been found with deficiencies but not enough to detain her. We are very worried that she is in no shape to go there if she can’t manage Baltic/European cruises without being 4 or 5 hours late at her ports of call.