Sorrento at Valletta, 13 January 2010

This is an interesting small set. We were going through old photos with the wife to put in our family photo album, and I came across these ones taken at Valletta, Malta when we were there in January 2010. I remembered photographing just one passenger vessel during our visit (Malta in the winter is, apparently, not that big of a cruise destination - or at least this used to be the case) but I had no idea it was this interesting.

Sorrento

IMO 9264312
Name history: Eurostar Valencia, Sorrento
Built 2003, C.N. "Visentini" Donada, Italy
Tonnage 26 000 GT
Length 186,00 m
Width 25,60 m
Draught 6,50 m
1 000 passengers
400 passenger berths
160 cars
2 250 lane metres
2 Wärtsilä diesels, combined 18 900 kW
2 propellers
2 bow thrusters
Speed 22,5 knots

The Sorrento was, of course, a member of the uniquituous Vinsentini-class of ropaxes, built by the shipyard with the same name in Italy. She was built in 2003 as the Eurostar Valencia for Grimaldi Lines' service between Salerno and Valencia, as well as Salermo to Tunis via Palermo and Valletta. In 2005 the ship was tranferred to the new Grimaldi-Louis Dreyfus joint service between Civitavecchia and Toulon, but also sailed on routes linking Civitavecchia to Corsican ports. She retained the Grimaldi livery, but with Grimaldi-Louis Dreyfus hull and funnel markings.

In November 2006 the ship was renamed Sorrento, but this did not have an effect on her route for the time being. From 2008 she again served on the routes from various Italian ports to Tunis, occasionally calling en-route at Valletta. The photos below were taken during this era. In summer 2010 the ship moved to the livorno-Valencia route, then in spring 2012 tranferring to the Adriatic (Brindisi-Igoumenitsa-Patras).

In March 2013, the Sorrento was chartered to Acciona Trasmediterránea for service between Valencia and Palma da Mallorca. She was only partially painted in Trasmediterránea colour and retained her distinctly Italian name. On 28 April 2015, a fire broke outboard shortly after the ship departed Palma de Mallorca. Everyone onboard were safely evacuated, but the ship was a total loss, and was eventually scrapped in Aliaga, Turkey in 2016. The accident took place only a few months after the Sorrento's sister ship Norman Atlantic suffered a similar (albeit more widely publicized) fate on the Adriatic.

But on to the photos, which show the Sorrento departing Valletta Grand Harbour on 13 January 2010. Photograped from Birgu (Vittoriosa). As always, click on the image to see it in larger size.

Sorrento with Valletta in the background. Come to think of it, I haven't done a panoramic photo in a while.

Not a bad livery, to be fair. I also quite like the GLD funnel symbol.

Kships will return in about a week with photos from the brand-new Megastar.

Cruise Olbia in Civitavecchia, 12 May 2016

Today I was out and about, finally opening the summer cruise photo season for Helsinki - very much delayed - when the Marco Polo called. I have photographed the ship several times before, but CMV changed its livery for this year, so there was a reason to take another set of shots. Today, however, we'll be looking at something a bit different, a ferry I had never encountered before that I saw in Civitavecchia durig the recent Crystal Symphony cruise: Grimaldi's Cruise Olbia.

Cruise Olbia

IMO 9198939
Name history: Superfast VI, Bimini Superfast, Cruise Olbia
Built 2001, HDW Kiel, Germany
Tonnage 32 728 GT
Length 203,90 m
Width 25,00 m
Draught 6,80 m
1 595 passengers
842 cabin berths
1 000 cars
1 926 lanemetres
4 Wärtsilä-Sultzer diesels, combined 46 000 kW
2 propellers
1 bow thruster
2 stern thusters
Speed 28,9 knots

The Cruise Olbia (something of a misnomer considering the quality of the onboard product, I believe) started life as the Superfast VI - which, as you can guess, was the sixth newbuilt ship of Superfast Ferries, a subsidiary of Attica Enterprises. It was a sister ship to the Superfast V, the pair being the first ships Superfast built at HDW, who would go on to build four additional units after the first pair. Although products of a different shipyard, the Superfast V and VI were externally near-identical to the earlier Superfast III and IV pair built at Masa-Yards in Finland.

The Superfast VI was originally due to be delivered by the end of 2000, but due to technical difficulties the delivery was pushed back to February 2001, after which the ship entered service on Superfast Ferries Adriatic Sea routes. The ship sailed primarily on the Patras-Igoumenitsa-Ancona route, apparently without major mishaps, for 12 years, until in February 2013 Attica Enterprises reported they had sold the ship to the Genting Group for delivery in March of the same year.

Genting were of course at the time primarily known for their Star Cruises brand, but the Superfast VI was destined for a different use: providing transportation between Miami and the Bimini (Bahamas) casino resort owned by the Genting subsidiary Resorts World. To make it more suitable for the new use, the Superfast VI sailed to Malaga, Spain, where it was refitted and renamed Bimini Superfast. Externally, the ship's livery was only superficially modified.

Originally, the Bimini Superfast was due to begin operations in late June 2013, but the US Coast Guard required modification to be carried out before it could operate out of US ports, and the service entry was pushed back until late July while further refitting was carried out.

As it turned out, the Miami-Bimini service was not a huge success. In January 2016, Genting withdrew the Bimini Superfast and laid it up, citing that they were looking for a more effective ferry as a replacement. Genting had, by this point, acquired Crystal Cruises and embarked on an aggressive expansion drive for the company - I'm personally mildly surprised they didn't rebuild the Bimini Superfast as a cruise ship for Crystal. Instead, the Bimini Superfast laid in Miami until March 2016, when it was sold to Grimaldi Group. Renamed Cruise Olbia, the ship sailed to Besiktas in Turkey for a brief refit before entering service with Grimaldi Lines in April.

The photos below show the Cruise Olbia arriving and moored at the port of Civitavecchia on the evening of 12 May 2016. Photographed from onboard the Crystal Symphony. Click on the images to see them in larger size.

The ship arrived at Civitavecchia somewhat delayed, which seems to be the way things are done on the Mediterranean.

I'm fairly certain the Grimaldi Lines text on the side is not in the standard font used by the company.

These photos could only have been taken from a cruise ship moored at Civitavecchia overnight (or at least one that stays quite late), so I'm very glad to have been there.

When the ship became the Bimini Superfast, the originally white area between the black stripes in the aft superstructure was painted red. For the Cruise Olbia, this was repainted Grimaldi's dark blue, which works even less well than the red..

The bow and stern thrusters were highly useful here. Also note Tirrenia's Amsicora in the background.

Later, that same evening, taken from the balcony without a tripod as I had already packed it away and left the luggage to be picked up by the crew. Considering the circumstances this shot turned out great!

Next time: Probably the Marco Polo.

Cruise Barcelona in Barcelona, 9 August 2014

Cruise Barcelona

IMO 9351488
Built 2008, Fincantieri Castellammare di Stabia, Italy
Tonnage 54 919 GT
Length 225,00 m
Width 30,40 m
Draught 7,00 m
2 300 passengers
1 200 berths
215 cars
3 050 lanemeters
4 Wärtsilä diesels, combined 55 440 kW
2 propellers
2 bow thrusters
Maximum speed 27,5 knots

The Cruise Barcelona was the second unit to be completed in Grimaldi Lines' four-ship-strong Cruise series. She was preceeded by her running mate Cruise Roma and followed by the Cruise Europa and Cruise Olympia built for Minoan Lines' trans-Adriatic services.

The Cruise Barcelona was delivered in September 2008 and placed on a service from Civitavecchia to Barcelona, running parallel with the Cruise Roma (Civitavecchia is, of course, the port town of Rome). At some point since then an intermediate call at Porto Torres in Sardinia has been added to some (but not all) departures on the route.

The photographs below were taken in Barcelona on the evening of 9 August 2014. I was actually prepared to miss the Cruise Barcelona, as her scheduled arrival time was at 18.15, while I was going to be in port only after 19.00. As it happened, the Cruise Barcelona was delayed by over 2,5 hours, thus arriving perfectly for my schedules. Since my photo spot was chosen for ships arriving at the Baleria and Trasmediterránea terminals, the lighting was less than idea for the Cruise Barcelona. But still, these are better than nothing.

The container cranes make for a rather neat background, actually.

Not sure if I like the overall exterior design of the Cruise series... Even with the sleek forward part, it's still a box. Although a better-designed livery would help a lot with that.

The way they've wasted a lot of the forward views is a bummer.

I have to compliment Grimaldi for choosing a dark funnel colour, and not going the all-white way like so many other passenger ship operators do these days.

The angle of the aft superstructure just doesn't work with the other angles on this. And since the design is all about angles...

Next time: Super-Fast Baleares.