Messages

1

Shipping News and information / Re: Cruise & Maritime Voyages (CMV) and TransOcean Tours closure

« on: March 09, 2021, 11:05:23 AM »

And Columbus now appears to be at anchor off the Omani coast. Waiting for a vacant slot at Alang ? And interesting that she's been squawking "Armed Guards Onboard" on AIS since leaving Suez - would have thought that a vessel with a skeleton crew onboard and heading for the knacker's yard would represent a bit of a low value target for the hijackers

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Shipping News and information / Re: Cruise & Maritime Voyages (CMV) and TransOcean Tours closure

« on: January 28, 2021, 04:38:17 PM »

Magellan repositioned for beaching as of 16:37 GMT today and AIS now reading "Goodbye Forever". Sad

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Shipping News and information / Re: Resolute cruise ship attacked by navy

« on: April 03, 2020, 10:01:25 AM »

Good grief. I think you really need to have a sense of humour if you're going to work on Resolute (until recently Hanseatic).  It should be remembered that her recent Antarctic season was cancelled following the collapse of her charterer, One Ocean Expeditions, and she has recently been held under arrest in Buenos Aires. And now this !

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Help and Advice / Re: Cruise ships Dover

« on: February 26, 2020, 10:22:27 AM »

The short answer is "No" Les. Dover Harbour Board prevented this when they shut the Prince of Wales Pier to the public to make way for a new marina and freight park.  If you have a good long lens you might get reasonable photos from Langdon Cliffs, behind Eastern Docks, which is a pretty cool place to visit anyway. Admiralty Pier is where the cruise ships berth and that is usually open to the public, but the cruise ships are obscured by the terminal building.  And Disney insist that Admiralty is closed to the public when their ships are in town for security reasons. Typical behaviour for a Micky Mouse organisation. Cheers, Mark.

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Shipping News and information / Re: Akademic Ioffe aground in Canadian Arctic

« on: August 28, 2018, 10:10:11 AM »

Thanks Dirk. I spent two and a half weeks on the Ioffe a couple of years ago on an Antarctic cruise and was impressed at the professionalism of the Russian crew and the way that they needed to be constantly on their toes and flexible in terms of forward planning to cope with weather and icing conditions.  It will be interesting to see what the root cause was. I was told that the ship's history as a Russian "research" vessel means that she and the Vavilov are still not allowed into US ports, but I'm not sure whether that's still the case. Anyway, you'll find a couple of photos on here of the Ioffe taken by me down south in December 2016 - I still drift away when I think of me and Mrs Pegpilot standing on a South Georgia beach with half a million penguins. Did it really happen ?

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Shipping News and information / Re: Ships-favourite names,not the ships,but the names,for any reason !

« on: December 21, 2017, 02:35:07 PM »

Oh AMSMTG, I was really hoping that BJ Queen was a suction dredger. Or a hovercraft. Sadly not.
Two from me.  A decade ago I saw an Aran Islands ferry at Doolin in Ireland called the Happy Hooker.
And apparently Patrick Stewart has/had a yacht in Vancouver called "Make It So" - or so my Vancouver resident brother informs me...

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Shipping News and information / Re: P&O ferry Pride of Kent runs aground

« on: December 10, 2017, 04:43:04 PM »

Called "Pride of Britain" apparently. Where DO they get their information ?

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Trip reports / Smyril from the UK

« on: April 24, 2017, 04:44:17 PM »

Hi all,
Just back from a trip to the Faroes and Iceland from the UK.  Now that the DFDS Esbjerg service is closed, we opted to fly to Oslo, have a night there and take Stena Saga to Frederikshavn overnight and then by train to Hirtshals to pick up Norrona. The Smyril trip was great, with the bonus that the outbound trip routed straight through the gap in the Shetlands rather than to the north or south.  We saw Smyril's two other vessels, the Eystnes and Smyril, in Torshavn before leaving for Iceland. Seydisfjordur was quiet but the bus trips into eastern Iceland were good. And then back to the Faroes where I took the Nolsoy Ferry across Torshavn bay and back. On our return to Hirtshals we took the Superspeed 1 acrosd to Larvik and then on by train to Oslo and home. An interesting diversion approaching Larvik was the Norwegian special forces practicing boarding from speedboats. But yes, the Smyril round trip is one I'd recommend (including the bridge tour), and I'll stick a few photos on the board later