Queen Victoria is short on drawers

This report comes from Jay Clarke, our correspondent currently aboard the new Queen Victoria, and photographer Robert Koltun of El Nuevo Herald. (The photo above was shot in New York earlier this week by AP photographer Don Emmert.) You can contact Jay at jclarke@MiamiHerald.com:

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Drawers are the hot topic on the world's newest cruise ship, Cunard's Queen Victoria. Not the kind you wear, but the kind you put things in.


The issue? There aren't enough drawers in passenger staterooms on this, the newest of Cunard's legendary ''Queens,'' and passengers are not happy about it. In the most numerous staterooms, for instance, there are four shelves in the closet, but two of them are occupied by a safe and pillows. Each of the two night tables has a drawer and an open space above, and that's it.

Even Capt. Paul Wright took note of passenger ire over the drawer situation.

''I'm supposed to get a big room,'' he told guests at the captain's reception, with tongue in cheek, ''but they gave me this small room. And it's full of drawers. Drawers everywhere.''

When you're embarked on a 106-night world cruise, that's not much space to put your belongings. So some passengers are improvising.

''When we get to Los Angeles, friends are meeting us,'' said passenger Judy Duvall. ''They're going to take us to Wal-Mart so we can buy plastic boxes.'' She and her friend Sue Moore, both from Hawaii, are traveling on the entire cruise, so they'll need the boxes.

The Queen Victoria got off to a rousing start last Sunday in New York, when all three of Cunard's Queens -- the Queen Elizabeth 2, the Queen Mary 2 and this new ship -- rendezvoused in New York harbor to a spectacular display of fireworks. It was the first and only time the three Queens would be in the same place at the same time. The QE2 has been sold and will become a permanently moored hotel in Dubai this fall.

After its stop in Fort Lauderdale Wednesday, the QV is continuing on a world cruise that will take it through the Panama Canal, across the Pacific and Indian Oceans and back to Southampton, where she began this maiden global odyssey.