Other ships from last week

Here are some of the other ships I saw last week. I didn't photograph many of them simply because it was dark and, occasionally, raining.

CMA CGM Marco Polo, in the Solent, just off Cowes. Photographed from Red Osprey.

Hyundai Speed is on her way in to Southampton as CMA CGM Marco Polo leaves the Solent

Small container ship Aurora at Rotterdam, seen from Norwegian Getaway

Dettifoss inward on the New Waterway on Monday evening.

The following morning, at Southampton:

Black Watch

Cornelis Zanen

Eurocargo Salerno

Hartland Point

NYK Virgo departing Southampton

And that's it for a few weeks, unless something crops up in the meantime. I am back at work now for 8 weeks until I go to Australia on an astronomy/birdwatching trip (with ship-spotting thrown in for good measure!) in mid-March, although there is the Ocean Liner Society's Ship Show in Southampton on 22 February.

Making a Getaway

Back in October, me and my friend Patricia booked a trip on Norwegian Cruise Line's new Norwegian Getaway, sister to Norwegian Breakaway. While Breakaway appeared in April, Getaway's debut on the world stage was due to happen in the rather less clement month of January.
To cut a long story short, me and Patsy arranged to meet at Town Quay, Southampton, before heading to the airport to fly to Amsterdam where we travelled on to Rotterdam. We stayed overnight in a hotel near the cruise terminal and joined Getaway the following day, January 13th.

This post will be just photos of the ship. Subsequent posts will show some of her interiors as well as the other ships I saw (not many, because of the long hours of darkness at this time of year).
On the morning of the 13th, we got up at the hideous hour of 0400 and walked across the Erasmus Bridge to watch the ship dock after a one-night cruise into the North Sea. As PD will no doubt remind me on Facebook later, I whinged about stupid o'clock excursions and the fact that it was cold enough to freeze spherical objects off alloy simians, but it was worth it when I look at my photos which came out pretty well.

Later that morning, on our way to the terminal, we stopped on Erasmusbrug again for photos of the ship in daylight, where we could see her gaudy hull art in all its glory. Personally, I quite like it on the ship (although it would not be the sort of thing I'd hang on the walls here at home) and it certainly livens up what would be yet another boring white cruise ship. Traditionalists may splutter into their beards about both the art and the ship's looks, but I think she looks great and I love her.
The Butlins-at-sea on the uppermost deck is a bit crap, as is the shite pop music (One Direction, Maroon Five, etc. - and I only know who they are thanks to being subjected to local commercial radio at work! Luckily I had brought my iPod with me.) blasting from the speakers, but this is easily avoided by not going up there and the rest of the ship, inside and out, is superb.

Obviously, being on the ship at the time, I have no photos of her arrival in Southampton, although plenty of my ship-photographer friends were in Mayflower Park on Tuesday morning and one friend, Gary Davies, was on a RIB. Check out his website 'Maritime Photographic' for the photos of Getaway in Southampton Water.

The next opportunity I had for photos was after disembarkation on Thursday (yesterday) morning at the City cruise terminal (Berth 101, next to Mayflower Park), as we were walking back towards our respective ferries at Town Quay.

It was then that the heavens opened, with (yet another) heavy shower as we exited on foot through Dock Gate 8. Fortunately, this had stopped as we got to Mayflower Park so we could get some photos from there, as well.

As I waited for the 0915 Red Jet home, I took a couple of long-distance shots from Town Quay, always an activity fraught with cluttered peril because that disgrace of a burned-down and partly-collapsed Royal Pier is in the way.

The interior shots and pics of other ships will follow sometime over the weekend.

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In some very interesting news, P&O Cruises are changing the appearance of their ships. The funnels will become blue with a golden rayed sun on them and there'll be a Union Flag on their bows. The artists rendering shows the new Britannia, due in spring 2015, in the new colours but, as I understand it, the whole lot are getting the Union flag as well as the new funnel colours. Interesting, and a move which will no doubt cause the traditionalists to have kittens. They already hate the hull colours on the likes of the NCL ships so they'll have a collective meltdown over a traditional company like P&O adopting this approach. Me? I am looking forward to it!

A tale of two ships

We docked at Amsterdam on Friday morning and me and Patsy caught an early afternoon train to Rotterdam to see the new Norwegian Breakaway and hopefully watch her sail at 7pm. In the end we didn't hang around because the weather was vile, with almost constant rain, and it was cold. Of course, I'd left my waterproof coat in my bag on Aurora, so I was wet through and shivering as my light jacket didn't quite cut it and my longish hair was hanging in rats tails!

The photos were taken from the Erasmus Bridge, where the ship was attracting quite a lot of attention.

Norwegian Breakaway - awful name, by the way! - is a nice ship, externally, and I like the artwork on the hull, although I'll be interested to see how long it lasts when faced with the ravages of an Atlantic crossing, especially if it's a rough one. The position of the lifeboats is also an interesting one, surely having them positioned as they are is inviting storm damage; the ship is designed for cruising in nice exotic locations but she will run into storms, especially as she will be cruising between New York and sunnier climes further south.

Afterwards we went to find SS Rotterdam which is permanently moored about half an hour's walk away, and it was interesting to compare the two ships built 55 years apart (Rotterdam was launched in September 1958). No balconies on Rotterdam, of course, as she was built as a liner and not a floating resort, which is essentially what Norwegian Breakaway is.

We went aboard, which is free if you don't want to take a tour - we didn't have the time on this occasion - and had a look round those parts of the ship which are open. There was a conference on and she's used as a hotel, too, so she was busy. I have some deck and interior shots which I haven't processed yet and I'll add when I get round to it.

Because of the appalling weather, we decided not to watch Norwegian Breakaway sail and headed back to Amsterdam on a very crowded train, which fortunately largely emptied at Den Haag (The Hague) and Schiphol.

Typically the sun came out as we walked back to Aurora from the station, creating some lovely golden early evening light, so I photographed Aurora from the dockside (so that's really a tale of three ships!). From what I've heard, the weather down at Rotterdam only slightly improved, so we didn't miss a lot.