Oct22
Here Is The Ship That Harri Built: Oasis of the Seas
In a Finnish shipyard, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. is building the world’s largest cruise ship. Capable of carrying more than 6,000 passengers, Oasis of the Seas will be 40 percent larger than the company’s Freedom-class vessels, which currently reign as world’s largest cruise ships.
Royal Caribbean has repeatedly expressed confidence in its ability to build and operate ever larger ships — thanks in no small part to one man: Harri Kulovaara, the company’s executive vice president, maritime.
“Yes,” Kulovaara chuckles, “maybe we do like building big ships. The purpose, however, is not just to build the biggest ships. The purpose is to build outstanding vessels that provide great facilities for our guests. And we need a lot of real estate for that. That’s the reason we’ve constantly been growing the size of our ships. We have a lot of good ideas that we want to incorporate in the ships.”
If you think Oasis may be too big, consider Royal Caribbean’s history.
Since introducing Song of Norway in 1970, Royal Caribbean has rolled out nine generations of ships. And each generation has been 30 percent to 40 percent larger than its predecessors, according to Kulovaara.
The first of the Voyager-class vessels was 60 percent to 70 percent larger than any cruise ship that shipyards or Royal Caribbean had ever built, Kulovaara says. By contrast, from Voyager-class to Freedom-class was a marginal step, only a 15 percent increase in size.
While Oasis of the Seas’ behemoth proportions may appear daunting, Kulovaara says his team has demonstrated a successful history of taking on larger and larger ships and that they feel comfortable taking on the challenge. “We have a culture where we have constantly been moving forward in a manageable way with the size of the vessels and with the complexity of the vessels. That’s why we feel that we can easily take on this kind of challenge.”
Harri’s Love Of Ships
From the start, Kulovaara seems to have been destined for the job of building large ships. Born in Helsinki in 1952, the boy who later lived by the sea in Turku graduated in 1970 from the Technical University of Helsinki and afterward landed at Effjohn Oy AB. There, the young naval architect got a chance to carry out his first design: a tugboat.
Greater designs were in store, however. At Silja Line, Kulovaara oversaw the building of Silja Serenade, the first ferry to feature a promenade. Kulovaara was thinking of that promenade and how it might be applied to cruise ships when in 1995.
Royal Caribbean recruited him away from his executive position at Silja Line. Four years after Kulovaara stepped on board, Royal Caribbean introduced the first of its five-ship, Voyager-class vessels, which featured the popular “Royal Promenade,” remarkably inspired by a Baltic ferry and one forward-thinking Finn.
Kulovaara clearly loves to push the envelope and build bigger and better ships. “I like challenges that involve taking something that has not been done before and doing it,” he says. “I clearly love that.”
Building big ships is a dream come true for the boy who loved to watch ships sail from the Finnish coastline. Building big ships also is a job that Harri Kulovaara does not take for granted. “It is, of course, very rewarding,” he says, “and I feel very blessed that I’m able to be a part of it.”
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