On 28 March 2023, Minoan Lines’ cruise ferry KYDON PALACE left the port of Piraeus for the Ionian Sea following her company’s official announcement of February 2023 for her temporary redirection to the Adriatic service due to increased needs.
The ship will serve the Igoumenitsa – Brindisi line from 3 April to 31 October 2023.
Photo: Minoan Lines
On 21 March 2023, passenger ferry STAR N (ex RED STAR 1, GABRIEL SCOTT, SAGAFJORD, SANDEFJORD, FENNO STAR, SCANDINAVIA, TERJE VIGEN, VIKING III) of the Ukrainian Sea Star Ferries, was arrived at Aliaga for recycling.
The 57-year-old ship served on the Brindisi-Valona/Brindisi-Igoumenitsa-Zakynthos route from 2007 to 2021 on behalf of Red Star Ferries, Sea Med and Star Lines as the RED STAR 1.
She was built in Germany in 1965 as the VIKING III and had a quite impressive career, serving on behalf of Townsend Thoresen Car Ferries, Da-No Linjen, KG Line, Jakob Line, Scandi Line, Color Line and Saga Line before coming in the Adriatic service. She was laid up in the port of Tripoli (Libya) since 26 December 2022.
Photo: Marine Traffic (Altay Alan)
Wärtsilä and Wasaline have made an agreement to allow Wärtsilä Field Service engineers to do the Wärtsilä NOx Spot Check on-job-training onboard AURORA BOTNIA. The Wärtsilä NOx Spot Check training consists of two parts: a theoretical course and the OJT. [press release]
With summer approaching, FerryGoGo has investigated the prices for ferry crossings in the high season.
FerryGoGo is a ferry travel, route comparison guide and booking engine.
Ferries are an excellent alternative to flying and increasingly expensive rental cars. This study examined the costs of a ferry crossing to various holiday destinations in the high season.
Since ferry crossings are difficult to compare and prices are often dynamic, this study explicitly looked at the price for a crossing with two people and a car during the high season (1 to 8 July) and calculated the cost per km/mile.
FerryGoGo selected all prices between 15 and 17 March 2023.
Based on the data, here are some conclusions:
Prices for a return ferry ticket to popular destinations in total & price per km in the peak season (long routes > 150 km)
Prices for a return ferry ticket, and price per km in the peak season (short routes < 150 km)
“The Swedish investor Jakob Johansson has been Viking Line’s largest individual owner since 2019. Now he is proposed to take over the chairman’s baton from the Åland shipowner Ben Lundqvist,” writes Swedish business newspaper Dagens Industri (paywalled).
EXPRESS 5 is on its long trip from the Philippines to Rønne. The trip is going well, and therefore Bornholmlinjen is now putting the new fast ferry into the sailing schedule with the first trip from Rønne towards Ystad on 29 April 2023.
January-December 2022:
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Thursday 23 March 2023, co-legislators agreed on FuelEU Maritime – a new EU regulation ensuring that the greenhouse gas intensity of fuels used by the shipping sector will gradually decrease over time, by 2% in 2025 to as much as 80% by 2050.
This measure will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the shipping sector by promoting the use of cleaner fuels and energy. [source: European Commission]
FuelEU Maritime will help decarbonise the maritime transport sector by setting maximum limits on the yearly greenhouse gas intensity of the energy used by a ship. The targets cover not only CO2, but also methane and nitrous oxide emissions over the full lifecycle of the fuels.
The new rules also introduce an additional zero-emission requirement at berth, mandating the use of on-shore power supply (OPS) or alternative zero-emission technologies in ports by passenger ships and containerships, with a view to mitigating air pollution emissions in ports, which are often close to densely populated areas.
FuelEU Maritime takes a goal-based and technology-neutral approach, allowing for innovation and the development of new fuel technologies to meet future needs, and offering operators the freedom to decide which to use based on ship-specific or operation-specific profiles.
The Regulation also provides for a voluntary pooling mechanism. Under this scheme, ships will be allowed to pool their compliance balance with one or more other ships. Thus, it will be the pool as a whole that has to meet the greenhouse gas intensity limits on average.
