Down in the Pier 39 area of San Francisco on Friday night showing some visitor’s from Japan around, and moored up down there was NCL’s first US flagged ship: Pride of Aloha.
She’s not the the largest of the cruise ships sailing, coming in at around 77,000 tons (Royal Caribbean‘s Voyager class ships come in at a whopping 138,000 tons), but still a very good sized cruise ship. Unusually for Hawaiian cruises she will also be spending all her time in the islands (rather than making a detour to Fanning Island or Mexico). This is achieved by having her fly under the US flag (a US law bans foreign-flagged ships from doing all US port cruises).
NCL’s new Pride of America, was to be making the July 4th Hawaii sailing, but she sank in the shipyard during a bad storm back in January while still being built.
Now for the twist… it seems that Pride of Aloha is none other than NCL’s Sky – the ship we sailed on in Alaska a few years back, just after she started service. Seems that she has been refurbished and renamed ready for her new life in Hawaii (the refurbishment work was done here in San Francisco).
At the time of writing you can still watch her bridge-cam under her old name (though the index page has been updated to remove her from the list).