Cheng.

Thanks for the corrections. I have no idea of the physical weight that a ship might be.

I have also been in Venice and watched the ships sail in and out and observed that no bow wake comes from the ship as their speed is very low and is regulated by the tugs and the pilot. meanwhile the small car ferries and the water buses and everything else smallish are charging about causing all the wash and waves regardless.

Right, so, did a couple of sums to see what the actual ships displacement would be compared to the volume of water in the Giudecca canal.

Width of canal at narrowest point (round about where she had the accident 240 meters

Depth of the canal 9 meters

Length of the ship 250 meters

All multiplied comes to 540,000 cubic meters or about the same in tons

The dead weight of the MSC Opera is given as 2,620 tons or about the same in cubic meters

Divide one in to the other and I get 206.11 times the volume of water to the volume of the ship.

It appears to me that there is plenty of space for the displaced water to to get out of the way of a ship crawling along the middle of the canal without any heavy surges out of the sides of the ship.

For reference as comparison the Oasis of the Seas dead weight (one of the biggest) is given as 15,000.

If anyone else thinks this a a load of nonsense, that’s fine.

I don’t believe the cruise ships are causing any damage to Venice or her canal infrastructure. However I do not think any cruise ships should enter Venice through the Giudecca canal. It looks excessively weird to see these huge thing sailing past the entrance to St. Mark’s square. I will not comment on what the solution to the problem should be, that’s for the Venetians to do something about it, if they really want to and in the process lose a whole heap of business.

CroisiEurope Acquires Silver Discoverer

From Cruise Industry News website

https://www.cruiseindustrynews.com/cruise-news/20860-croisieurope-acquires-silver-discoverer.html

Final Silversea sailing in July.

Was she ever very popular?, Will she be much missed? and What if anything will replace her?

Silversea is pushing forward into the future.

Link to Cruise Industry News website

https://www.cruiseindustrynews.com/cruise-news/20728-silversea-sets-aggressive-growth-course.html

Les,

I would suggest the last two numbers are the cruise length in days. Have just checked my own for 2020 and it ends in a 16 for a 16 day cruise.

Bill,

Something similar here in 2017.

This flight to complete a journey from the UK via Madrid to Ecuador to join the Silver Explorer in Guayaquil. We arrived in Quito the night before and staid over before our flight to Guayaquil and chose the later flight to give ourselves some rest time the next morning prior to heading to the airport but 8am was not excessively inconvenient.

Quito To Guayaquil 24 Oct 12017 on XL 1359 departing 1200. Booked 6 Jan 2017

changed to

Quito To Guayaquil 24 Oct 12017 on XL 1359 departing 0800. LATAM e-mail came in 3 Feb 2017.

There was already a flight about 8am but with a different flight number and another at 10am.

I can’t remember what number or what office the phone call went to when I called LATAM. But the lady on the other end sounded Spanish and had a limited amount of English. To try to cut it short, her computer only showed the new timing and I could not get her to understand there had been a change. Each time I tried to explain she just said ‘no, no’. Was then asked if I wanted to cancel with no suggestion of rebooking. It was complete waist of time and just accepted the change.

For us it was none refundable cheap tickets costing £70 for us both but if we had a tight turn round…..

Luckily for us that our timing was not compromised and it did not muck up our schedule.

I am not saying it is a scam but it sure looks like a scam since they don’t rebook you on to an earlier flight but change the same flight to an earlier time. In our case a full 4 hours.

Rocchi

The information for what it's worth is in Silversea press release from July 31

https://www.silversea.com/other-resources/press-releases/2018/july-/royal-caribbean-completes-acquisition-of-silversea-cruises-share.html

Paragraph seven but no other details.

The first Invictus enhancements will begin rolling out on the Silver Muse this upcoming August 19th where an upgraded champagne and caviar offering will be initiated. Immediately thereafter, these and other enhancements will be implemented fleet wide, impacting a wide variety of onboard features and strengthening Silversea’s reputation for indulgent, luxurious embellishments.

Rocchi

Forgot to add this last night.

How do you, pronounce eleven ?

How do you pronounce eleven ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA6ektXRVak

JP.

Just teasing.

An interesting article. Here in Scotland we have a national poet Robert Burns 1759 - 1796 and is not well known throughout the rest of the world. He was born and brought up here in the south west of Scotland so his language and writings were in Scots. I’ve had a go at reading some of his poetry and enjoy Tam O’shanter, good story, but have to refer to the English translation to understand it as many of the Scots words are no longer in use today. Pretty much everybody in this area speaks fairly standard english (The Queens? dunno), however the accent we have in this area can be a bit heavy like I have. Quite often I have to have Mrs. Rocchi act as translator when speaking to other nationals, Even the English.

You may have heard of Auld Lang Syne. Quite well known. That was another thing he wrote down.

Now as far as Gaelic is concerned, it was spoken in this area until around 12th century and was replaced with Scots in south west Scotland. Our wonderful Scottish parliament has made the decision that Gaelic is the second language and we have road signs appearing with a town name and a Gaelic translation below in italics and all the police cars have the two names on them. These translations are being imposed in areas where the population find this language unintelligible and unpronounceable. Gaelic a noble language, is spoken mostly in the north west and by approx. 1% of the Scottish population.

Rocchi

'I have the hardest time understanding the Scots though.'

Thanks JP. 😉

'I have the hardest time understanding the Scots though.'

Thanks JP

Agreed WRIPRO,

Estimated. Wind and maybe Cloud gone in about three years, then Shadow and Whisper gone in four to five years. As these ships are now quite old and no longer wanted in the new version of Silversea. They will not be replaced by new similar sized small ships to the classic fleet. This will leave the big ships Muse, Moon and Dawn and added to by even bigger ships of 800 passengers from 2023. Silver Spirit may well be retained as she will then be in their small ship size.

The new company is stomping ahead with big tackity boots.

We received an e-mail today to let us know that our March 2020 BGI - Lisbon TA cruise on the Wind has turned into a Caribbean Cuba cruise.

Oh my gosh. Silversea with 2 new ships of 800 berths each?

I really hope this is a mistake and the report misprinted the numbers. Or RCI are just going nuts.

Silversea with even larger ships. Nooooo!

They are totaly missing the point of Silversea.....   Or my idea of it anyway.

https://www.cruiseindustrynews.com/cruise-news/19827-luxury-market-5-700-berths-added-in-two-weeks.html

Is it me or has the Silversea website been recently modified? If so, when did it happen?

The origin of species. Evolution through natural selection. Some clever chap called Darwin. So smaller expedition ships?

Just my speculation.

Hopefully RCI will take an overview of silverseas Expedition fleet and realise that they will have to be a bit more ambitious.

With a new beginning with RCI the three other small bought in ships should be replaced by dedicated new builds in the next few years for a complete refresh of the expedition fleet.

https://www.porthole.com/silversea-cruises-orders-3-new-evolution-class-ships/

Also from this source.

https://www.silversea.com/other-resources/press-releases/2018/october/silversea-cruises-orders-three-new-ships--.html

JP.

You enjoy fine food. When we were in Quito 2010 the concierge in the J W Marriott recommended the restaurant Zazu, about 5 minutes in a taxi. At that time it was rated one of the top three restaurants in South America. Just a wee recomendation. We had a wonderful dinner and the wine list alone is worth the visit. This is of course if you decide to have any time in the city at all. Enjoy your trip. It's a spectacular region.

Rocchi

Part of my point was that the expedition part of Silversea is making a ton of money. I think I read that somewhere on here in the last few days. Silversea under RCI could invest in new modern exploration ships that would be more appealing to us old yins and attract a new following from a younger set of passengers. We sailed the Galapagos on the Celebrity Xpedition in 2010 and although not up to SS standards at that time felt like a ship that was more suited to exploration as the only access to the ship was by zodiac. Last year we had a wonderful cruise on SS Explorer in South America and were in and out the hole in the side quite a lot and lovely ship as she is, still did not really feel like an expedition ship. (Maybe because I seem to remember spending more time on buses. 16 hours one day).

Not including the Cloud which I still can't think of as an explorer. With a new beginning with RCI the three other small bought in ships should be replaced by dedicated new builds in the next few years for a complete refresh of the expedition fleet.

I apologise if I gave the idea that we had to 'crawl' though a hole in the side of the ship. The intention was to emphasise that a small expedition ship is better boarded by a sea level stern platform. I remember on the Xpedition there were some fellow passenger who wern't very steady on their feet but with the assistance of the crew everyone was helped on and off the zodiacs with out incident and I seem to remember that it felt safer.

Anyway, I have said more than I usually contribute, time to withdraw and pull the cover over the head again.

To add to the point of silversea being left behind. Silversea has a presence in the Galapagos with one ship which is about 20 years old, was bought in for the purpose, has very little open deck space and has to be boarded from the zodiac by a hole in the side of the ship.

As a comparison, Celebrity Cruises have some ships in the Galapagos and the Xpedition has an open deck with restaurant and lounge area and a sea level stern platform for boarding from the zodiacs. Next year they will introduce the new Celebrity Flora which has been specifically designed for the region. Along with the new ship Celebrity will be enhancing their product by introducing several upgrades that will take them up to the standard that is expected on a Silversea ship. This new ship will push the expectations of cruisers to the region out in front of anything that Silversea has in any of their expediton fleet. Hopefully RCI will take an overview of silverseas Expedition fleet and realise that they will have to be a bit more ambitious.

This from Cruise Industry News

https://www.cruiseindustrynews.com/cruise-news/19645-celebrity-xpedition-makeover.html

This from Celebrity website

https://www.celebritycruises.co.uk/onboard/our-ships/celebrity-flora/

Have been with Silversea since 1999. Have more cruises booked. Looking fwd to cruising Silversea for a long time yet.

I have no problem with using a Zodiac.

15 Feb 21 21 USHUAIA > Day at sea > New Island > West Point Island > Port Stanley > Day at sea > South Georgia > 3 Days at sea > Gough

Island > Tristan Da Cunha > Nightingale Island > 4 Days at sea > Cape Town > CAPE Town.

This cruise does not require an expedition ship. All these destinations are well north of the Antarctic and seems like a nice cruise across the south Atlantic. As far as I am concerned the Wind is only going in for good old tidy up.

The 2020 Whisper world cruise is scheduled to visit the Antarctic peninsula during the Buenos Aires to Valparaiso section. I know that the Whisper is not an expedition ship and think she is not scheduled to become one but will still go to the Antarctic.

Unless of course I have completely missed the point.

Keelhauling. Yes, one pax per cruise and voted on by the crew.

I found this in the skift website.

Carolyn Spencer Brown, Editor at Large at the industry news and review site Cruise Critic, said in June that new management was already making a big change before the deal.

“It’s really old-school luxury,” she said. “But what the new management is doing is putting a contemporary twist on the old-school luxury — putting more flavors, more vibrancy, less formality, less stuffiness.”

I can see that waterslide coming yet.

https://skift.com/2018/07/31/royal-caribbean-is-giving-its-new-silversea-fleet-a-luxury-upgrade/

Hi JP,

It certainly looks like RCL have a plan and are starting to throw some money at Silversea.

But some of the hyperbole used in the article is a bit excessive.