Another year another Queen!

I can't believe that it has been over a year since the old Queen left us to go to another life...and now a new Queen came to town today.

You can't believe my excitement at waiting to see this new boat...I think I must be addicted to liners!

I wanted to see how much she would differ from the previous flagship. She is described as being a liner rather than a cruise ship! She was to be an Ocean Liner for the 21st century, and she went into service on Oct 20th 2004.

Yesterday was her fifth birthday. You can read more about her here.

This time we went to see if we could spot her before she entered the harbour.



Finally she emerged from the mist. It is a wild and windy day.



Then we had to race round to our favourite vantage point to see her enter the harbour. I wanted to take the same views as last time to compare her.

Here she comes, no blue sky today!



Look at last years picture of the old Queen.



The new one was built to have speed and stabilty..a difficult thing to achieve in modern Cruise liners with so much super structure. She certainly has more of the look of a modern cruise liner with large cabin windows.



compare... she is bigger and broader and was the largest ocean going passenger liner in the world at the time of her launch.
The original two Queens were 65,000tons, the retiring Queen was 80,000tons and this current one is 148,000tons.



Does she still have the old fashioned elegance tho'!

She looks so small again within the large harbour.



We were back down in the village with the oldest yacht club in the world in time to see her sail deeper into the harbour.



We didn't go to see her in dock this time, believe that she is going to get a great Irish birthday party send off with band and all when she leaves at 6pm this evening.

The sun has finally come out and the sky is blue, I hope that the passengers have wonderful afternoon.

Hope that she comes again.