Rudder Damage forces termination of cruise.

Last week we received notification that the Celebrity Century cruise that departed Barcelona on 13th October was having to be terminated early in Villefanche as the ship had suffered some serious Rudder damage. The damage was discovered during a dive inspection while the ship was docked in Nice, France, on October 14. Because the rudders are used to steer the ship, the line deemed that the repairs require a dry dock. The vessel is to be dry-docked in Villefranche where it will be repaired in time for the cruise departing on the 25th October – Now I know one or two of you are on the cruise, so I wanted to reassure you that the cruise is still due to depart as planned. Luckily those passengers involved in the terminated cruise will receive a full refund of the cruise portion of their total fare for this sailing. We will also give all guests a 25 percent future cruise credit for another Celebrity cruise

Some of you may know that my long suffering other half Curtis, is a boat engineer and last week he was called out to a narrow boat that also had problems with the Rudder where it had hit a sill in a lock causing the boat to be stranded and Curtis spending the best part of two days repairing it where it was, which meant having to do it in the water – I didn’t even know it could be done this way, but what he was saying was that it was a massive job, so the thought of Rudders being damaged on a cruise ship seems virtual nightmare – I cant even guess at what would have caused the damage! I was thinking perhaps cruise.co.uk should start a little wager until we know exactly what happened – any ideas how this kind of damage could be done?