What a cool guy Celebrity Cruises president and chief executive Dan Hanrahan is. Not just calm as his new ship Celebrity Eclipse negotiated the obstacle course known as the River Ems, but also totally laid back about the fact Eclipse looks a long way from being finished.
"When I see Bernard Meyer panic, I know it's time to get worried," he told me. "There is a lot to be done but I am confident if they tell me it will be ready on time, it will be ready on time."
Incidentally, Bernard Meyer was on board for the conveyance, and was quite confident that all was going according to plan.
Nonetheless, there are hardboard walkways, plastic sheets and bare rooms all over the ship, which is crawling with workers hammering, drilling and painting.
And this is how the lawn is looking....
It's been too cold in Papenburg to get it laid - and I can certainly testify that it was freezing there last week - so the plan now is to ship the grass from Italy, where it has been grown, to Eemshaven, on the edge of the North Sea, where the ship is now and, fingers crossed, they'll get some warm weather and be able to get it sorted.
Among other changes on the ship, Celebrity Eclipse will have a new speciality restaurant, Qsine, the brainchild of chef Jacques Van Staden, Celebrity's vice-president of culinary operations.
Jacques was on board for the conveyance and enthusing about the fish and chips popcorn and other weird foodie things on the menu. He dubs them "uniquely unordinary". I admit I was just struggling to envisage what it was all about.
To help us out, in the evening of the conveyance they served a few things from the menu in the Oceanview Cafe.
We sampled the popcorn fish, below (turns out it's pieces of battered fish served in a box - only about five or six pieces in each though, as the box is mainly filled with packaging), garlic brioche wrapped in paper cones, Crunchy Munchies, right, which are basically calories in a cardboard cone) and Disco Shrimp, bottom (it's prawn cocktail on a bed of plastic ice that flashes).
It'll cost $30 per person to eat there, which seems steep to me for what is rather ordinary food served in bits of cardboard and paper. Reminded me of McDonald's, but with more packing.
Of course we did only have a taste of things to come, not the whole menu, so rather than have to eat my words I'll stick with saying "seems" and wait to see the reaction of passengers when the ship launches - and don't forget, it'll be mainly Brits on Eclipse initially as the ship is sailing no-fly cruises from Southampton this summer.
Jane Archer
