One of the world's largest cruise ships, Star of the Seas, set sail from Turku on Finland's southwestern coast on Thursday night on its maiden voyage towards its future home port in Florida.
Built by Meyer Turku shipyard, the vessel departed at 10pm, bathed in the glow of a calm Finnish summer evening. The vessel's brightly lit windows formed the ship's name along the hull as it slipped past onlookers gathered along the coast.
Star of the Seas shares the title of the world's largest cruise ship with its sister vessel, Icon of the Seas, also built by Meyer Turku and delivered to Royal Caribbean in November 2023.
Spectators gather to watch launch
Hundreds of spectators lined the shores of the Turku archipelago to witness the departure. Among them were brothers Rasmus and Lasse Laakso, who had travelled from Espoo.
"We've been ship-spotting since we were kids," Rasmus said. "We came here in the afternoon, got some snacks, and waited — and it was worth it. Seeing the ship lit up with its name on the side was really something special."
"It was an impressive sight, especially when the Finnlines ferry Finncanopus passed by first. The sheer difference in size really hit you when Star of the Seas followed," added Jukka Rapo from Halikko.
The ship features over 20 restaurants, six water slides and a surf simulator. It is nearly identical in design to Icon of the Seas, the first of the new Icon-class vessels.
Part of a growing fleet
Star of the Seas is the second in Royal Caribbean's Icon class, with a third ship currently under construction in Turku. Funding was secured earlier this year for a fourth vessel, and options are in place for a fifth and sixth.
Project manager Jaakko Leinonen told Yle that lessons learned from building the first Icon-class ship helped streamline the process this time.
"Now that we knew the final product, it was easier to prepare and plan the way forward," Leinonen said during a media tour last week.
By Friday morning, Star of the Seas had reached the middle of the Baltic Sea, about 100 kilometres south of the Åland Islands, according to the website MarineTraffic.
The ship is scheduled to depart Port Canaveral, Florida, on its inaugural Caribbean cruise on 31 August.