Casino ship out for repairs
The Sterling Casino Lines gambling ship at Port Canaveral has been taken out of service for engine repairs, the company said Wednesday.
Sterlings Ambassador II will travel to Jacksonville today for repairs on its starboard main engine. The ship is expected to resume daily offshore gambling excursions from Port Canaveral around Dec. 20.
Some Sterling employees told FLORIDA TODAY they were upset when they learned Tuesday they will be out of work for several weeks while the ship is out of service. The employees asked not to be identified.
"All Sterling Casino Line cruises are on hold effective today," the company said in a brief statement Wednesday. "We apologize for any inconveniences to our patrons and look forward to serving you again soon."
Sterling representatives declined to comment further.
The 1,744-passenger, 440-foot-long vessel normally operates two offshore gambling excursions each day.
The Sterling ship and another gambling vessel at Port Canaveral operated by SunCruz Casinos carried more than 750,000 passengers from September 2006 through October, including more than 473,000 on Sterling, according to Canaveral Port Authority statistics.
Since Sterling stopped cruises, SunCruz, which operates the 1,200-passenger Surfside Princess from Port
Canaveral, has seen an increase in passengers and bookings, SunCruz manager Cheryl Lindsey said.
Problems with one of the engines on Sterlings Ambassador II surfaced Oct. 11 when Sterling contacted the Coast Guard about it, Coast Guard spokesman Donnie Brzuska said.
"They called us on the radio and said they had lost one of their engines," Brzuska said.
The Coast Guard allowed Sterling to continue operating while waiting to make repairs, but ordered the vessel to be escorted by tugboats during its gambling cruises in case of a problem, Brzuska said.
Originally, Sterling planned to make the repairs at the dock at Port Canaveral with minimal or no interruption in service. However, the company later learned the repairs would require a hole to be cut into the ships hull, so the decision was made to go to a shipyard in Jacksonville, Brzuska said.
Several hundred people work on the ship. Sterling employees knew about the engine problems, but some were caught off guard when they learned the ship had been taken out of service, they said.
Employees were not expecting to be paid during the shutdown, and some were planning to collect unemployment compensation benefits.
In September, the Ambassador II was docked for a week for repairs on the ships generators. Some of the vessels generators were overheating and shutting down, according to the Coast Guard.
In August, the ship was forced to temporarily leave Port Canaveral because it did not have required documentation, known as a "certificate of financial responsibility." The certificate guarantees the company has money set aside to fix damage caused by an accident or for pollution discharge.
2007-12-05
