Viking Sky in Helsinki, 31 July 2017

My plan for a return to weekly updates hasn't been too successful, thanks to the combination of a hectic work schedule and a hectic travelling schedule - two weeks ago I was in Norway on the trip organised by Cruise Norway mentioned in the previous entry, after that I had a week to do final corrections my and Bruce Peter's upcoming book Innovation and Specialisation: The Story of Shipbuilding in Finland (which will get a detailed blog entry later) and then during the past week I was in Armenia of all places. I had actually prepared this particular entry before going to Norway, with the idea that I could post it during the travels, but never found the time. The technical quality of the photos is not perhaps quite as good as in the more recent entries, as these were taken during the time brief moment in time when I had to revert to using the old old 350D camera.

Viking Sky

IMO 9650420
Built 2017, Fincantieri Maghera, Italy
Tonnage 47 842 GT
Length 227,28 m
Width 28,79 m
Draft 6,65 m
944 passengers
4 MAN diesels, combined 23 520 kW
2 propellers
2 bow thrusters
1 stern thrusters
Speed 20 knots

The Viking Sky is, of course, a sister ship to the Viking Star, and as she was delivered just this year, there's very little to actually say about her. So let's get straight down to the photos, which were taken from Vattuniemi in Lauttasaari as the ship departed Länsisatama (West Harbour) on the afternoon of 31 July 2017. As always, click on the images to see them in larger size.

People in general seem to be extremely keen on the Viking Cruises ships' exterior design. To be honest, I'm not sure if I agree; they are attractive modern cruise ships, sure, but nothing spectacular.

And since I started criticising the ships, I'm also going to say that the names - while nice in that they recall the Royal Viking Line of old - do come across as rather uninspired.

As you can see, the water levels were quite low, which resulted in neat foreground rocks.

There was also a regatta of some sort going on, so neat sailboats were also captured alongside the Viking Sky.