Now a familiar visitor to the port, Holland-America's Volendam makes its 27th visit today. And in two days' time sister ship Zaandam will be making its first appearance here.
Both are 60,906gt vessels that can accommodate 1824 passengers. They were built by the Fincantieri group's Breda yard at Venice with Volendam being handed-over in October, 1999, and Zaandam six months later.
Holland-America, like P&O Australia and Princess Cruises, are all part of the Carnival group. Already this season both of these companies have been represented here by two other classes also built by Fincantieri, at Monfalcone. Two of these in port last week were the London-registered sister ships Pacific Jewel and Pacific Dawn, operated by P&O Australia. They were originally ordered for service with the Sitmar Cruise Line which P&O acquired in 1988.
Pacific Jewel (70,310gt) was completed as Crown Princess in July, 1990, and subsequently carried the names A'Rosa Blu, Aidablu and Ocean Village Two, before receiving its present name two years ago.
It was joined by its 70,285gt sister ship 12 months later, which as Regal Princess, was known locally until it became Pacific Dawn in 2007.
These two ships were designed by renowned Italian architect Renzo Piano whose inspiration for their distinctive appearance was based on a dolphin.
Sun Princess and Dawn Princess, both 77,441gt, and delivered in November, 1995, and April, 1997, have been joined this season by the slightly larger 77,499gt Sea Princess, completed in November, 1998.
Recent weather patterns around the country have affected their planned-in- advance schedules. Last Friday's call here by Sun Princess was cancelled, while Dawn Princess and Sea Princess each missed a visit to Fiordland, the latter also missing out on one to Napier.
On the local scene, strong winds delayed the arrival of IVS Orchard to load logs at Dunedin more than a week ago, and the departure of Tenna Bulker from Ravensbourne at the weekend. Both were Singapore-flag, first-time visitors.
IVS Orchard, which later moved down to Beach St, left last Friday evening for Inchon. It is another of the Silver Lake bulk/lumber type vessels built at Guangdong by the Jiangmen Nanyang shipyard and only entered service this year on March 2.
This 20,928gt is owned by IVS Bulk Shipping 609 Pte Ltd, and is managed by Unicorn Shipping. IVS stands for Island View Shipping, a company established in 1976 that was bought by Grindrod in 1999. IVS was relocated to Singapore in 2005.
Both companies are part of the Durban-based Grindrod Unicorn group that was founded as a cleaning and forwarding agency in November, 1910. Its first ship, the small 150-tonne steamer Frontier lying disabled on the Durban breakwater, was bought in 1922 by Captain John Edmund Grindrod who had it refloated, repaired and returned to service.
One of the oldest names associated with Danish ship-owning is J. Lauritzen, founded at Copenhagen in 1884.
From 1960-96, fully refrigerated, red-hulled units of the fleet with the familiar Reefer suffix in their names, were often seen here.
While they mostly called to load apples or frozen meat, several underwent surveys in dock at Port Chalmers.
Carrying frozen cargoes was one core business for the company until it withdrew from it four years ago.
Today the focus is on other sectors, tankers, lpg carriers and bulkers like Tenna Bulker and others of this type that have represented these interests locally.
Tenna Bulker has only been in the fleet since early last year. It is owned by J. Lauritzen Singapore Pte Ltd, a fully-owned subsidiary of the group established at Singapore in 2005.
Another of those standard and now very familiar bulk/lumber carriers built at the Imabari yard, the 16,960gt vessel was handed over on January 7, 2005. It commenced its career as Yusho Trinity, then from June, 2007, until bought by Lauritzens, it traded as Sat Trinity.
Pacific Basin's Mount Owen, another of the same design that has been in service since March, 2008, made its second visit to Ravensbourne yesterday.
