PAPENBURG, Germany -- Almost exactly one year ago, NCL executives traveled to Aker Yards France in Saint-Nazaire for the ceremonial cutting of the F3 ship's first piece of steel.
The line brought along its top producing travel agents, and both NCL and Aker brass heralded the 150,000-ton F3 ships as a new generation in cruise ship design. NCL would soon go on to reveal that the ships would have several new features, including wave-style, curved cabins; an ice bar; and no main dining room.
Few could have predicted the recent conflict that has grown between the line and yard. According to Aker, the conflict is a dispute over costs; according to rampant industry rumors, it could result in the cancellation of the order.
However, just before that October weekend last year in Saint-Nazaire, NCL was already feuding with Aker over costs, and Aker had said that NCL let the deadline pass on an option to order a third F3 vessel.
Andy Stuart, then NCL's executive vice president of sales and marketing, said at the time that NCL simply wanted to extend the deadline to exercise its option for a third ship, because NCL and Aker hadn't reached a price for several changes that had been made to the design of the first two vessels.
"Given that we haven't finalized those changes, that ultimately means the price of the option is unclear," Stuart had said.
Now of course, it seems that dispute was never finalized. The ship is now 25% complete, and NCL has reportedly invested $200 million into the project.
Aker said in its statement that there are several examples of such disputes in "projects with this magnitude of complexity," but Meyer Werft shipyard executives here, where NCL built all of its Freestyle ships prior to the F3, asserted during a shipyard visit last week that this type of dispute was anything but common. In fact, they said, a cancellation this far along would be unprecedented in the cruise industry.
NCL isn't commenting on any of this, presumably in keeping with its longstanding policy of remaining silent on any issue that involves legal or commercial disputes. While this may indeed be prudent policy in this litigious age, it also has a considerable downside: The travel agent community and its customers are left wondering about the future of the F3 ships, the very ships that NCL has hailed as its future.
When no one talks, rumors find ways to fill the silence.
One rumor is that NCL simply can't afford the ships. NCL Corp. has continued to report financial losses; Star Cruises said in August that its 50% share of NCL's loss for the first half of 2008 was approximately $85.5 million.
Certainly NCL would take issue with the affordability question, especially since CEO Colin Veitch said earlier this year that the line was in the strongest financial position in its 41-year history, thanks to the cash infusion that Apollo Management injected into NCL when it took a $1 billion, 50% stake in the cruise company in January.
Then there are those who say that working with Aker Yards France has been difficult for NCL, and that at this point NCL would rather walk away and take the $200 million hit than continue working through this bad relationship.
Perhaps none of this is true. But until NCL talks, even more rumors will find a way to fill the information gap.