"GAP Explorer" replacement "MS Expedition" coming to Svalbard

Recently the Canadian company's new vessel, the M/S Expedition, a former Baltic Ro-Ro ferry, has been announced to join the former icebreaker Polar Star and the former "Hurtigruten" coastal steamer Nordstjernen in regular traffic around the Svalbard archipelago.

M/S Expedition in her previous role, as Baltic ferry (image credit: Wikipedia).

The decision for this vessel was apparently based on its size, ice class and recent conversion by its Canadian owners to expedition cruising. With this, Spitsbergen Travel will almost double its current passenger capacity on the expedition cruise market.

Other upcoming newcomers are expected from Lindblad Expeditions (ex-Lyngen, National Geographic Explorer) as well as from Oceanwide Expeditions (ex-Tydeman, Plancius) putting the total number of expedition vessels for the 2009 season to around 20.

Interestingly, the booking for the M/S Expedition is currently available through both GAP Adventures and Spitsbergen Travel websites.

It's been a busy month...

The month of July had certainly deserved more than this short summary, but there was simply no time for blogging.

Among other things, we had my debut as mooring boat skipper (as well as my first - minor - crash with the boat ;-( ..., we had a "midnight water stop crisis" when the town's freshwater supply to the port and airport facilities suddenly was blocked in the middle of the night, we had two independent grounding incidents of expedition cruise vessels, each followed by diver surveys in port, as well as three helicopter evacuations all of which fortunately turned out to be less dramatic than it could have been. We also had the season's first successful cooperation between ships of competing expedition cruise operators, allowing them to moor side by side and thus doubling the time at berth for both vessels (unfortunately, that same night brought us the "midnight water stop crisis"...).

Also, our little port has made it in the local newspaper, "Svalbardposten" with a big and quite balanced article, featuring the challenges our 85m-pier faces with a steadily increasing amount of traffic, containing both classic cruise liners and expedition cruise vessels.

The port of Longyearbyen has long ago proved to be a major asset for the town during the hectic and short summer season, and it is reasonable to assume that it has started to earn some money for the community some time ago.

Two question remain: 

1. whether the authorities will impose more and sharper restrictions on ships and routes around Svalbard, p.e. banning "heavy" fuel grades altogether (they are already banned for the North-eastern and Eastern part of the Archipelago) or simply closing off areas where mapping and sounding efforts are still below standard.

2. whether the projected investment of 90-110 million Norwegian Kroner for a new pier (or an extension of the existing facilities) will be accepted by the local and National administration (it has just recently been on the table, but was put on hold).

The first point would be a major blow to both cruise industry sectors. While the classic cruise sector is already struggling with rapidly rising fuel costs - and a regular "fuel surcharge price war" is well under way - the expedition cruise sector is dependent on two things: reasonable access to remote corners of the world, and reasonable density of traffic in these areas (or else, "remote" quickly loses its meaning). 

For those not familiar with marine fuel oil grades, here is the relevant article at Wikipedia. Roughly speaking, the heavier the fuel grade, the cheaper it is, but also the breakdown time gets longer, thus extending the impact of fuel spills.

So with further restrictions pending for Svalbard, the classic cruisers have reason to fear for their profit margins, whereas the expedition cruisers may even lose some of their "raison d'etre", their unique ability to bring people to

 places where only a few select others can go.

One might challenge this concept of "boldly going where (almost) no-one else is going" by saying that this exposes the last remote corners of our world unduly, but the fact remains that few people would care about these remote corners if nobody was ever allowed to go there in the first place.

The second point, whether an investment in new pier facilities will ameliorate the current - tense - traffic situation, needs to be considered with one other factor in mind: so far it has not been the physical access to the pier for loading/offloading purposes that has caused most concern, but the supply with enough water within a given time frame. The smaller expedition cruise vessels do not have the capacity to hold or produce sufficient freshwater themselves and are therefore entirely dependent on a regular and in some cases quite substantial supply of water during their port days.

So even if we had twice the pier space available, without the possibility to increase freshwater delivery to the vessels docked, most of today's scheduling issues would remain.

At the same time, the town of Longyear is investigating the possibility of becoming "Co2-free", which would mean implementing expensive Co2 trapping and storing technologies for the local coal-fired power plant, and on top of that, both the current capacity of the existing power plant as well as that of the backup power supply (some diesel generators) are under investigation, and both plants are very likely due for an overhaul or even partial replacement. So building plans for a new pier seem rather unlikely.

"Maxim Gorkiy" gets (yet) another chance?

The legendary cruise ship Maxim Gorkiy, which used to be a regular in our waters as well, seemed to be doomed but recent rumours indicate that the ship might be kept in operation after all:

Partial cross-posting from "Doug Newman at Sea":

Most of us had long since written off Orient Lines after NCL announced the sale of its only ship, Marco Polo, in June 2007, with no replacement in sight. When Marco Polo ended her last Orient Lines voyage in April 2008 (she’s now owned by Global Cruise Lines and chartered to Transocean Tours), it seemed the 15-year-old line, founded by legendary industry entrepreneur Gerry Herrod and later bought by NCL, had sailed off into the sunset.

...

Now NCL parent Star Cruises, which retained the dormant brand after NCL gained its independence, had sold Orient Lines to an American company called Origin Cruise Group who intended to bring it back to its former glory.



Several reliable sources indicate that this company is now negotiating to purchase the 24,220 GT, 630-berth Maxim Gorkiy, whose charter to Phoenix Reisen ends in November 2008, from Sovcomflot. Built in 1969 as Hamburg for the now-defunct Deutsche Atlantik Linie and briefly renamed Hanseatic in 1973 before being sold to the Black Sea Shipping Company (Blasco), part of the Soviet state-owned shipping monopoly Morflot, in 1974 and renamed Maxim Gorkiy. Already established as one of Germany’s best cruise ships, she’s spent most of the remainder of her career on charter to German tour operators; Phoenix Reisen first chartered her in 1988 and has been her sole charterer ever since.

But her high running costs as a steam-turbine ship with a high consumption of bunker oil eventually led to Phoenix’s announcement of her retirement in November 2007. Since then, she’s been facing an uncertain future. It remains to be seen whether the problem of running costs and the upcoming SOLAS requirements that will enter into force in 2010 (a deadline that has reportedly been extended to 2013 for Maxim Gorkiy) will be surmountable or whether Orient Lines will resume operating with a more modern, probably less-interesting ship instead, but there is no doubt that Maxim would be an ideal fit for the Orient Lines product, and I’d certainly be delighted to see her flying the Orient Lines flag.

The Maxim Gorkiy is in fact a vessel rich in history, especially up here in Svalbard waters. In 1989 the Maxim Gorky made headlines twice. On around midnight on 19 June 1989 she hit an ice floe while on a cruise near Svalbard and begun to sink rapidly. All passengers and a third of the crew were instructed to abandon ship, while the Norwegian coast guard vessel Senja was dispatched to assist. By the time the Senja arrived on the scene some three hours later, the Maxim Gorkiy was already partially submerged. The passengers were evacuated from the lifeboats and ice floes by helicopters and the Senja, taken to Svalbard and later flown back to Germany. Meanwhile the crew of the Senja had managed to stop the Maxim Gorkiy's sinking, by which time her bow had already sunk down to the level of the main deck. On 21 June the Maxim Gorkiy was towed to Svalbard where quick repairs were made to make her watertight enough to survive a return to Germany for repairs. The ship sailed to Lloyd Werft, Bremerhaven under her own power and after repairs was back on service on 17 August 1989.

The Maxim Gorkiy hit news again in December of the same year, when she was used to host an international summit between George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev at Malta.

On 26 July 1991, while on a cruise to Svalbard a television exploded on board, injuring three people. In December of the same year the ship was re-registered to Nassau, Bahamas. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union she was transferred to the fleet of Sovcomflot, who continued chartering her to Phoenix Reisen.

Some quiet days in July

The first month of the summer cruise season is over, and I am looking forward to an entire week without any of "my" vessels in port.

Of course, that does not mean that there is nothing to do: there is a steady stream of e-mails from vessel management, catering management, vessel staff, suppliers, collaborating shipping agents, travel agents, and the authorities to respond to. Vessels are ordering provisions, bunkering, crew transfers, TV recordings (of the European Soccer championship ;-), updates on sea ice conditions, chart corrections and repair or installation of onboard systems.

Since shipboard communication is quite limited by high costs and often unreliable connections, a lot of the everyday communication and administration of these ships - each and every one a fully functional hotel and employer of a diverse nautical, expedition leading, lecturing, and catering staff - is handled by the respective agents. For those vessels whose agents are not represented locally, our office generally accepts relay and often even sub-agent responsibilities.

So you could say that we coordinate about 20-30 hotels or "floating resorts" with all their customer relations, provisions, human resources, and general communications through our little 4-staff office.

Then there is the "fun part" of the job: invoices, bookings, bills, mail, sorting through offloaded gear and deliveries, equipment transfers, local repairs, local orders, office hardware etc.

It will be good to have a couple of "regular" 9-to-5 office days, then the action starts again on Saturday... ;-)

A busy day in port...

Friday 20/06/08 was definitely a special day for our little port. We received 5 expedition cruise vessels on the main pier within 16 hours, ranging from the 72m "Professor Multanovskiy" to the 117m "Akademik Sergey Vavilov". Four out of five vessels had special requirements this call, the biggest, "Vavilov" even docked and undocked twice to finish its FW (=freshwater) bunkering needs, the "National Geographic Endeavour" received a quite substantial delivery of fresh provisions and spare parts, and the last ship to call - "Antarctic Dream" - arrived for the very first time and therefore needed some instructions on where to dock etc.

The only ship that arrived and departed without any special requirements or arrangements was "Polar Star".

If you consider that every vessel needs at least 4 transfers during a normal call (disembarking/embarking passengers, offloading/loading of luggage) as well as 1 or 2 truck deliveries (typically fresh perishable provisions) and cargo pickups (typcially stuff that is in transfer to other vessels of the same operator) then you can imagine that having all these transfers multiplied by 5 and adding a few extra transfers as well as mooring/unmooring services for every vessel adds up to a quite busy schedule.

But we got it done, with no time to spare ;-) but also without any noticeable delays or hickups.

Now we are all looking forward to a few days with one-ship-per-day routine!

one week and 12 vessels later...

The first full week of the cruise ship season brought 7 expedition cruise vessels to our port - one even came in twice - as well as two big cruise liners, "Mona Lisa" and "Costa Victoria".



We usually do not have much business with these big floating "gin palaces" other than mooring service, i.e. taking their lines ashore and securing the ship to the pier. This can be quite a challenge if the vessel is so much bigger than our pier.



In those cases a designated mooring boat has to pick up the lines at the ship's bow and stern, and pull these to shore or to the pier where some poor buggers have to haul them up and put them on the bollards. For the biggest ships, their lines usually require two men just to lift them.



Curiously, these big ships discharge up to 2000 or even more passengers on the dock - our little town of approx. 2500 people then gets "flooded" with tourists - but they all leave within 4-5 hours, taking with them bags full of fluffy polar bear toys... ;-)

The much smaller expedition cruise vessels, on the other hand, typically have only up to 100 "pax" (passengers) onboard, but they hang around for up to 12 hours, have people flying in and out, provisions to be delivered, water and fuel to be bunkered, and so on. So paradoxically, a 70-meter vessel creates more work (and more business...!) for us as port agents than the 250-meter "gin palaces" do.

On top of that we received two supply vessels and one small research vessel.

Fun story of the week: "Mona Lisa" left the dock on time - it took 4-5 guys about 15 minutes to release all the heavy lines again - and just as we thought that we were finished a crew member stumbled into the port office ;-) His excuse for being late for departure was quite original:

" It was so cold, I could not feel my legs"...

The poor guy was from the Phillipines. He did not look too happy when we delivered him by mooring boat to his vessel which was already under way - he will probably get an earful from some officer for that one.

Akad. Sergey Vavilov - first call of this season

Today, Monday 09.06.08 we received the Russian ex-research vessel "Akademik Sergey Vavilov", a 117 meter ice-strenghtened vessel with a capacity of about 120 pax. and 40 crew. She used to operate together with her nearly identical sister ship, the "Amademik Ioffe", on hydrographic and hydro-acoustic research in tandem, sending and receiving long-range and low-frequency underwater sound waves.



After the end of the Soviet Era, these ships experienced a similar fate, as they were converted from scientific expedition operations to leisure cruise expedition purposes. They are among the biggest and most comfortable Russian vessels in the business by now, and I recently spent some very enjoyable time on both of them, cruising around the Svalbard Archipelago as well as along the Antarctic Peninsula, South Georgia, and the Falkland Islands.



Recently, the expedition cruise operators Peregrine Shipping and Quark Expeditions were merged by their new owner, the TUI Plc. Group, so from this season on they will be branded as "Quark Expedition" vessels.




The Vavilov will make a total of 9 calls to Longyearbyen before leaving these waters and crossing to Greenland and eventually Iceland, where she will conclude her Arctic season at the end of August. Since most of the staff and crew onboard are old friends and colleagues from many voyages past, I will certainly be looking forward to receiving them every ten days or so.

Actually, I guess I won't have much of a choice anyway, since I will be their port&ground agent throughout the season... ;-)