In The Harbour: M/S Marina
Hello all! The format for "This Week in the Harbour" is going to be a bit different going forward. Rather than showcasing the ships in one long post, I'm going to do shorter posts highlighting each individual ship. This week, we're going to start with the first cruise ship of the St. John's season that arrived on May 26th. This was the MS Marina.
M/S Marina in St. John's, NL.
Nationality: Italian (Registered Marshall Islands)
Class: Oceania
Length: 238.4 metres
Beam: 32 metres
Draught: 7.32 metres
Weight: 66,000 tonnes
Capacity: 1,252 passengers
Crew: 780
Speed: 20 knots
Year: 2009
Sailing from: St. Pierre, France Heading to: Belfast, Ireland
The M/S Marina, owned by Oceania Cruises, was designed by the Yran & Storbraaten architectural firm and built at the Fincantieris Sestri Ponente yards in Genoa, Italy. Her keel was laid in 2009 and she was launched in 2010, followed shortly thereafter by her sister ship the MS Riviera in 2012. In her keel is welded a US silver dollar and a pre-Castro Cuban peso, which is believed to bring good luck to the ship. The ships' were designed to be able to sail in all waters all over the globe.
M/S Marina in St. John's, NL. Summer 2015.
She has 11 decks and 9 dining spaces on board, most that are open seating but four require reservations. The ship has 626 staterooms and suites, and is outfitted with Italian marble, rich wood, granite, and leather. Her cabins and suite are designed to be 50% larger than those of Oceania's other fleet of ships, the Regatta-class.
Her visit to St. John's was mid-point of a "Montreal, QC, Canada to London, UK" cruise that included stops in Trois-Rivieres(QC), Corner Brook (NL), Sydney (NS), Dublin (Ireland), Holyhead (UK), and ending in London, and lasted from May 18 to June 3.