Aegean I Bought by Gerry Herrod?

[dougnewmanatsea]

According to a reliable source, entrepreneur Gerry Herrod has purchased Dolphin Hellas Shipping's 11,563 GT, 560-berth AEGEAN I. Mr. Herrod intends to convert her to an expedition cruise ship.

 

One of the cruise industry's most-respected figures, Herrod is the founder of Ocean Cruise Line, Orient Lines and Discovery World Cruises, which he sold to Paquet Cruises, NCL and Voyages of Discovery, respectively. Ocean Cruise Line and Orient Lines no longer exist, while Discovery World Cruises was merged with Voyages of Discovery.

 

Aegean I started life as the ZIM ro-ro ferry NARCIS in 1973. She was bought in 1985 by Dolphin Hellas Shipping, a company controlled by the Greek shipowner Anargyros Angelopoulos, and in 1988 emerged from a massive refit as the cruise ship AEGEAN DOLPHIN. She was renamed Aegean I in 1996 and later marketed under the Golden Sun Cruises and Golden Star Cruises brand names. She has been laid up at Piraeus since 2006 because of a dispute between Dolphin Hellas Shipping, Louis Cruise Lines and Majestic International Cruises about the ship's ownership. This dispute appears to have been resolved recently.

 

I look forward to further news about the ship and this reported new venture.

[bcscot]

Hello Doug. Thank you for that information. Do you think that this is timed to coincide with the end of Orient Cruise Lines & do you think he is aiming at replacing Orient with a similar one ship operation, like the MV Discovery?

 

Gerry Herrod must be getting on a bit in years. I briefly met him over twenty years ago when I worked for a little while on the OCL Ocean Islander, another converted ferry, now the Royal Star. He was not a young man then. I think that he has a very interesting history but I can't find much about him on Google. He is an Englishman who made his fortune in the USA. It may have been in the travel business or insurance as I recall.

 

Since discovering that the Marco Polo will not be lost to SOLAS, I am interested in trying her out sometime, in her new life with Transocean. I wouldn't mind sailing on the MV Discovery also. I suppose Saga's Spirit of Adventure comes into the same category as these other ships & maybe Swan Hellenic too. There are of course several other 'adventure' cruise companies about who have small vessels, but they are quite expensive.

 

It is good however that there are still small independent cruise companies that can still stay afloat (:rolleyes: ) in the current business climate.

 

Graham.

[Downdie]

Hi Doug:

I sailed on this little ship as the Aegean Dolphin way back in 1995 on a 4 night Greek Island cruise as part of a Greek package tour. She was a lovely little ship then that had been modelled as a mini Europa 3, interestingly I sailed on that ship just last year, and there was a resemblance.

I believe she was renamed the Aegean 1 when Renaissance chartered her as their first ship. It seems she may have deteriorated a bit during her years with Golden Star/Sun and her layup. Let's hope with a bit of a refit she returns to what she originally was, a pleasure to sail on.

[bcscot]

It is a shame that Lake Okanagan does not have a historical old steamer, puffing up & down the lake, taking tourists to visit all those wonderful wineries! I am thinking of the likes of the TSS Earnslaw on Lake Wakatipu in New Zealand (now almost 100 years old), Maid Of The Loch on Loch Lomond or The Sir Walter Scott on Loch Katrine, in Scotland.:)

 

Graham.

[Downdie]

Hi Graham:

I couldn't agree more with your concept for Okanagan Lake. Often when I walk past the beached SS Sicamous on Okanagan Lake, I think to myself that nobody in the past had any vision of what lay in the future. If they had, they would never have got rid of the sternwheelers on the lake or pulled up the rails of the Kettle Valley Railway. Now if we could only get a nice little cruise ship into the lake, we could make a killing with the buildup of the higher end tourist industry here.

[bcscot]

BC Ferries are putting some of the old Queens up for sale. How about it?:D

 

Graham.

[franu]

Any word on when and where it will sail? I am anxious to hear. I was a dyed-in-the-wool Marco Polo fan who is looking for a new home.

Fran