luxury cruise ships repairs las palmas port

Las Palmas Port Hosts Five Luxury Cruise Ships for Repairs

Las Palmas Port a Hub for Luxury Cruise Ship Maintenance

The Port of Las Palmas is currently a hive of activity in the luxury cruise segment, with a total of five vessels in dry dock at the ASTICAN shipyard facilities. Here, high-value repair, maintenance, and conversion work is being carried out. According to Puertos de Las Palmas, the luxury ships include the Ponant company’s Le Austral and Le Boréal, which have come from international polar expedition operations; the Sea Cloud Spirit, an exclusive 138-metre-long three-masted sailing cruise ship; the Ocean Explorer from Quark Expeditions, a luxury expedition ship linked to polar region campaigns; and the Hanse Explorer, a luxury expedition megayacht and icebreaker specifically designed for polar and remote area exploration.

Pioneering Eco-Friendly Bow Bulb Installation

Beyond the usual repair tasks for such vessels, the shipyard’s work on the two Ponant ships is particularly noteworthy. They are having new bow bulbs installed, which were designed and manufactured at ASTICAN. This is a pioneering project for the Canary Islands, aimed at improving the ships’ energy efficiency and reducing their environmental impact.

The President of the Port Authority of Las Palmas, Beatriz Calzada, emphasised that “the simultaneous presence of these luxury cruises in our facilities reflects the level of specialisation that the Port of Las Palmas has achieved in the field of naval repair, which keeps us at the forefront nationally in this sector. It is a particularly demanding segment that requires technical capability, precision, and a highly qualified port community.”

She added, “The fact that it is the first time the Canary Islands has manufactured and fitted bow bulbs to make ships’ navigation more efficient and reduce their pollution is no coincidence. It is the product of the know-how of our port companies, which have earned the trust of shipowners thanks to the high quality of the services they offer.” In this regard, the ASTICAN shipyard group positions itself as a benchmark for this type of project in Spain, having already carried out six operations of this kind between its ASTICAN and ASTANDER centres.

How Bow Bulbs Enhance Efficiency and Cut Emissions

Bow bulbs are hydrodynamic elements located at the front of the hull, below the waterline. Their function is to modify water flow and reduce the vessel’s resistance as it moves forward. This design decreases fuel consumption and, consequently, greenhouse gas emissions, while also optimising sailing performance.

Installing these new bulbs involves removing the original ones the ships were built with and replacing them with designs optimised for their current operational conditions. This constitutes a highly complex technical intervention requiring a superior level of specialisation.

Reinforcing a Leading Atlantic Position

The simultaneous presence of these five luxury cruises reinforces the Port of Las Palmas’s positioning as one of the main Atlantic hubs for specialised naval repair, capable of handling complex projects in both the offshore and high-end passenger ship segments. In this vein, Calzada concluded that “projects like this one, which combine innovation, sustainability, and technical knowledge, strengthen our international positioning strategy and allow us to continue advancing towards a more efficient, competitive port model aligned with the environmental challenges of the maritime sector.”

Source

Scroll to Top