Queen Mary 2 was roughly seven miles off Dover in Paul's photos, transitting down the Southwest bound lane of the Dover traffic separation scheme, as shown in the AIS history chart below:
http://www.aisliverpool.org.uk/historymap.php?map=folkstone&hh=17&mm=10&date=20100514
This is the best time to see her as when she is coming up channel into the North Sea she is over in the Northeast bound lane and several miles further out. Live information on the same amateur AIS site, or others, can be viewed to watch for her next southwest bound transit on 31st May.
http://www.shipais.com/index.php
Unfortunately, I think she is too big to squeeze into Dover, being half as large again as the largest vessels to call so far, and much longer and with a deeper draft. She is the only transatlantic liner in existence, maintaining a Southampton to New York service in the summer months combined with these short European cruises in between, and then cruising throughout the winter.
In order to perform her transatlantic liner role, she is substantially different to the dedicated cruise ships making her a great deal more expensive to build. She has a lot more steel for structural strength, finer lines for speed, and much more installed power to give that extra speed.
She has a CODAG arrangement of machinery - Combined Diesel and Gas. Diesel generators supply the electrical power for normal cruising speed to the four propulsion pods mounted beneath the keel. The forward pair are fixed and can propel her forward or astern. The after pair perform the same function but can rotate in azimuth and give her great manoeuvrability in combination with her three bow thrusters. For high speed, gas turbines supply the additional electrical power.
She does not have the looks of her forebear, the QE2, now languishing out in the middle of nowhere in a barren waste of concrete and sand on the outskirts of Dubai. However, a serviceable compromise has been achieved given the contemporary requirement for rows of balconies which do nothing for the lines of any ship.
The funnel is a bit of a disappointment as it is the crowning feature of any ship. It had to be a bit squidgy in order for her to be able to pass under the Verrazano Narrows bridge at the entrance to New York harbour.
