QE2 on the left, QM2 on the rightPeople, I don’t think I have the capacity to put a jinx on anything but the instant I saw the photo of the Queen Mary 2, it worried me. The boat is plain top-heavy.
As a sailor, even with stabilizers below, it worries me and the hype which is surrounding it reminds me a little of a particular 1912 boat beginning with the letter T and carrying Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet:
Wherever it goes, the ship is often greeted not just by crowds of onlookers, but sometimes even with parades and fireworks. ''When we go into Hamburg, 500,000 people line the shore to see the ship, and we've been there five or six times. I've never seen anything like it,'' said Ben Lyons, the QM2's first officer.
She’s been at it now for three years and the only glitch so far seems to have been the service on the maiden voyage. Fine, I’m absolutely certain nothing will go wrong. Truly. I’ve just been reading too much of this sort of thing.
Forget I mentioned it. QM2, every night in my dreams, I see you, I feel you; that is how I know you’ll go on …
UPDATE: Now it's gone just a little too far. Wikipedia includes a side by side size comparison with, of all craft, the Titanic and the Airbus.
UPDATE UPDATE: Free thinker has some great shots of her coming into San Francisco Bay. He raced down and took them himself.
staying on a boat that big would give me the heebie jeebies anyway. Can you thinbk of a worse way to spend an expensive vacation?
ReplyDeleteWell, it does have a few lifeboats ...
ReplyDeleteCityUnslicker - yes imagine the hordes you'd hve to negotiate anywhere you tried to go.
ReplyDeleteFreethinker - ... a FEW lifeboats, yes.
Yes. A friend of mine from Florida with more money than sense is trying to 'organize a fun group' to join it for the final leg next month. I, of course, am 'sadly unavailable' and shall just keep my 96% peaceful self as far away from that contraption as possible. My singing voice is beyond awful and I don't fancy tying myself to the mast sqwaking with arms outflung......
ReplyDelete