China's first homegrown cruise ship conducted a floating on Dec 17 in the shipyard at Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding Co Ltd, a milestone step in the vessel's construction before its delivery in September 2023.

The floating of the vessel indicates the 135,500-gross-ton Vistaclass vessel is half way through completion, and the ship has officially entered the second-half phase of interior decoration and system debugging.

To date, the vessel has finished about 55 percent of its total construction workload. Since its steel sheet cutting ceremony more than two years ago, 60,000 pieces of drawings have been transformed into 675 sections and 74 major sections before the cruise ship finally took shape as the 323.6-meter-long, 37.2-meter-wide hull structure in October.

Using about 12,260 tons of steel, the construction of the ship found abundant residual stress throughout the process of assembly and welding. Those stresses needed to be released to avoid distortion of the vessels' structure and to protect the follow-up interior decoration.

At the stage of floating, the ship can release and eliminate the remaining stress in the hull structure. It also helped collect data, measure and verify the vessel's gravity control to ensure the structural safety and stability of the vessel.

As the first homegrown large cruise ship enters a critical construction stage, all parties joining the project should collaborate closely, organize carefully, manage meticulously, and go all out to ensure the vessel's timely delivery, Lei Fanpei, chairman of China State Shipbuilding Corp (CSSC), the world's largest shipbuilder, said during the floating ceremony.

After checking all the measured data are normal, Lei announced the cruise ship's floating was a success.

CSSC's Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding Co Ltd, where the first domestically built large cruise ship is being built, prepared for the floating, adopting effective measures of digitalization and informatization to ensure the success of the procedure.

Marine cruise shipbuilding is always challenging, and it was particularly so amid the COVID-19 pandemic, said Arnold Donald, CEO of Carnival Corp, during a video speech at the ceremony.

He added that Carnival Corp is happy to see that despite these obstacles, SWS continues to make progress in construction to ensure the ship will be delivered in a timely manner.

The construction of a cruise vessel is a giant systematic engineering project which consists of 136 systems, more than 20,000 sets of equipment, 25 million components and parts, 4,200 kilometers of cables, 350 kilometers of pipelines, 450 kilometers of air pipes, as well as more than 500 global suppliers.

One example to show the complexity of building a cruise vessel is it uses 25 million components and parts in total. Given its special structure, complex craftsmanship, difficulty in construction, and strict requirements for global supply chain collaboration, building a cruise ship is an unprecedented challenge for China's shipbuilding industry.