Pianos at Sea

[robert goodale]

A bit more about the honeymoon cruise...

We sailed on the ELATION, an 855 foot cruising vessel weighing
70,367 gross tons empty and a total passenger and crew capacity
of nearly 3,500 persons.  There are a total of thirteen decks,
three of which are reserved for the crew and technical.

While on the ship we counted eight pianos, (if I remember
correctly), located in various entertainment, dining, and
drinking establishments on board.  All were Yamahas.  At least
two that I saw were equipped with Disclavier systems and at least
two I noted had PianoDisc systems installed.  I only heard the
PianoDisc units playing and unfortunately they were dreadfully
out of regulation so what came out wasn't all that pretty.  All
of the pianos had their legs secured by steal sleeves that where
anchored to the deck to prevent them from moving around should
the ship encounter rough seas.  (That would be an interesting
sight if they were being played at the time).

The pianos seemed to be in decent tune so I assume they are
serviced regularly.  I would guess this is done in San Pedro,
(LA), since that is the origination port of each cruise.  I never
got a real close hand look at the instruments but I could imagine
that there was probably some degree of rust on the strings due to
the salt air.  I did notice that at least one piano had what
appeared to be a DamppeChaser dryer unit.

Does anyone know who the tech is that services these
instruments?  Does anyone on this list service cruise ship
pianos?  I would imagine that there are probably some interesting
piano tech problems in this kind of environment.  Servicing these
would seem to me like an interesting contract.

Rob Goodale, RPT
Las Vegas, NV