While reports circulated that Titanic II may be built in a Belfast shipyard, a modified vessel with an equally tumultuous history was embarking on its maiden voyage.
Assembly II set sail in Stormont yesterday and on first inspection appeared a sturdier vessel than its predecessor. Admittedly, the issue of which flag it should fly is still the subject of mutinous discussions among some crew. However, it was all aboard when it came to debating topics such as education, housing and social security fraud.
Question-and-answer sessions proved almost as dull as a Celine Dion theme tune, the mundane proceedings providing hope that this time there would be no catastrophic veering off course. Martin McGuinness - more Art Garfunkel than Leonardo DiCaprio, it has to be said - seemed relaxed when answering questions about his education brief and spoke briefly in Irish.
He has a habit of swaying from side to side, rather like the doomed passengers on Titanic I. For once, though, the political waters stayed relatively calm and the only shots across the bow of the Education Minister came from the new Lord Mayor of Belfast, Sammy Wilson.
Anxious that his opponent should have something of a bumpy first crossing, Wilson berated McGuinness for "boasting" to schoolchildren about the time when he was on the run. McGuinness didn't understand his point. "Maybe if I had said it in Irish he would have understood," Wilson quipped through the speaker, John Alderdice, who struggled to keep command.
Mr McGuinness had the last word: "Well, go raibh maith agat, Sammy," he said, smiling, before congratulating Wilson on his new post.
Someone else who looked to be enjoying himself was the DUP leader, the Rev Ian Paisley, despite having made no secret of the fact that he and his party would relish the role of iceberg in this particular epic. He said it was his hope that Mr McGuinness would soon be on the run again.
Earlier, the SDLP had unveiled its new political slogan, "Changing the Face of the Future", and the accompanying poster from the back of a truck outside the Waterfront Hall. Clambering on to the platform with one of the poster's stars, Sharon Haughey (19), Seamus Mallon joked that it had been a long time since he had been on the back of a lorry with a young woman.
Haughey was the teenager who wrote to Bill Clinton four years ago, inspiring the US President to quote her words during his visit to Belfast. Now the chair of the SDLP youth in Armagh city, she said it was about time the North got back to real politics.
Yesterday real politics involved a Bill "to make provision regarding the destruction of dogs", but at least Assembly II managed to stay afloat.