Spirit of Tasmania has had a multi-million dollar upgrade. Spirit of Tasmania seating area. Picture: Spirit of Tasmania. Bunk beds! A four-berth cabin on Spirit of Tasmania. Picture: Jason Sammon. A cabin on Deck 7 Picture: Jason Sammon. More topics Cruise Ocean. More in tasmania. Where to go to see the Southern Lights.
Only in Tasmania: 14 things you need to know. The top 5 coffees in Hobart. Susan Bugg Editor Print Susan can usually be found in a window seat on a plane, at a gig or on the lookout for amazing animal encounters.
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Number of children. Yes, I would like to receive MyEscape Newsletter. By enquiring about this deal, you are consenting to us providing your details to the deal provider who will use and store them in accordance with their own privacy policy. The call indirectly led to the negotiations between them and TT-Line of Germany, whom they brought the Abel Tasman off six years earlier who. The handover was agreed upon for three years later. In the Swedish partners had arranged to sell also the Nils Holgersson to Brittany Ferries, in the January of This was due to needing her until they had received their own ships to replace her.
She sailed down the Trav where she blasted her horn three times, with the Tasmanian flag proudly hoisted on the bow. Her destination, Lloyd Werft shipyard in Bremerhaven. Afterwards everything was packed — from the travel brochure to the bottle of schnapps in the shop. Since the ship has made round trips between the two ports. It covers 1. Water consumption was million liters. The captain says there has never been a serious breakdown. The market value of the ship is far above the construction costs of the ship, that was million German marks.
On The conversion work and the training of the Australian crew will take 4 weeks. Only then the journey will start, which will take one month. She remained at the ship yard for almost a month, whilst many of the machinery was fixed up, and slight remodeling to the interiors. As with the Abel Tasman, the machinery was found to be in a poor state, but limited time and tight budget meant she must sail for Tasmania to begin operations for 29th of October.
The Germans had told the Australians that one of the fin stabilizers needed attention, but the Australians ignored them, because they were running on a tight budget. She called at Las Palmas on the Canary island for Bunkers.
She continued down the west coast of Africa bound for Cape Town, where she called again to take on bunkers. She set off across the Indian ocean for Fremantle, for Bunkers. Continuing she arrived in Devonport 12 November to great fan fare, os of people lined the banks of the Mersey River to catch a glimpse of the new Spirit of Tasmania. I personally recall this event, as a small child waving to the new Spirit of Tasmania with yellow and blue TT-Line flag as she came up the river.
Spirit of Tasmania remained in Devonport for a couple of weeks, for crew training, final fitting out and stocking of shops etc to be done. Well know Australian Cricket player from Tasmania, David Boon commented he might have to take the ship on a a mascot, as it was the day he scored a hundred in Hobart.
He later had a luxury suite onboard named in his honer. That night, shortly after Abel Tasman departed Devonport for the very last time, bound for Melbourne, Spirit of Tasmania also departed for Melbourne to begin operations. Spirit of Tasmania arrived in Melbourne to water cannons being sprayed, to celebrate her arrival.
She docked at No. She was now ready to enter service. Onboard the three conference rooms were named after old ferries from the Bass Strait, being the Princess of Tasmania, Taroona and Nairana. The only difference to the timetable was, the layover now was Sunday night in Melbourne, and not Saturday night in Devonport like the Able Tasman. Spirit of Tasmania settled into her new routine of sailing Devonport to Melbourne.
These proved quite popular. On a few occasions, She did longer cruises, where she left the bay and headed along the coast down to Cape Otway , but this was stopped, as the sea was to rough close to the coast in shallow waters. By the Spirit of Tasmania was sailing at capacity in the summer months, and usually with the garage decks full of freight, extra to passengers cars.
TT-Line of Tasmania were looking to buy one of these vessels, to run with the Spirit of Tasmania, it was to be named Spirit of Bass Strait, but they could not secure any funding form the federal government so it never materialized. The Bass Strait is know to be a very rough stretch of water at times. On one voyage the seas were very rough, one wave in particular so large it stopped the ship dead from 17 knots in just a moment.
So severe it bent all the plating on the bow. On another crossing the ship had rolled to such a degree a lot of stock fell from shelves in the shops and restaurants fell to the floor and some stuff not properly secured it fell.
During this time there were some alterations made to the ship internally, like increasing the restaurant size by making a cafe part of the space, among other refurbishments. This is basically a subsidy to transport private cars across Bass Strait, making it much cheaper for passengers.
This resulted in more passengers and their cars sailing on the Spirit. In July Spirit of Tasmania sailed to Sydney, for dry docking. It was the first time she had visited the city. On 15 of July Spirit of Tasmania entered the dry dock and was there until 25 July, when she was re floated and headed back to Melbourne.
Whilst she was away, TT-Line had charted Incat , a vessel from Incat Tasmania ship builders, to evaluate the possibility of running a fast craft on a more permanent bases. To try and cope with demand during the summer peak season, TT-Line made a new schedule for Spirit of Tasmania, where she would leave Devonport 4pm on Saturdays, arrive Melbourne 5am Sunday, Depart 9am arrive Devonport 10pm, Depart 2am Monday morning arrive Melbourne 3pm then depart at 8pm arrive Devonport 9am, thus enabling 2 extra sailings a fortnight.
During July of Spirit of Tasmania again sailed to Sydney for dry docking for two weeks. After a few hours into the voyage, there was a series of crankcase explosions over a period of time. It was decided to shut three of the four engines down to prevent even further damage. The Spirit sailed back into Devonport on only one engine, No. So successfully, only 12 months after delivery, Superfast Ferries placed an order for an additional two ferries.
This was a fair bit shorter, but still required the ships to sail at 27 knots over night and a day sailing back in the peak season. The start date was set to be 15 January from Sydney. A few weeks prior to the hand over, senior officers from TT-Line joined the ship on the Patras — Igoumenitsa — Bari route for familiarisation of the vessel. She underwent some works, including repainting the whole vessel, removal of the swimming pool on the aft sun deck, the propellers taken off to remove fishing line wound around the shafts, and the removal of the trademark Superfast wing tips.
She departed and headed for Hobart, crossing the Great Australian bight, encountering some rough weather but took it in her stride.
Work began almost immediately, only the next day the prefabricated deck house sections were lifted into place on deck 10, already with cabins installed. All the through deck connections for black and grey water had been installed by a team of technicians from Tasmanian based Taylor Bros, who had joined the ship in Syros and worked during the voyage to Tasmania, installing the plumbing. This new section contained 32 new crew cabins, each with a porthole and private facilities for each crew member.
Among the other works carried out in Hobart was the covering of the old pool deck, making it into an enclosed atrium. Also enlarging the restaurant, to cater for the whole complement of passengers, as breakfast and dinner were going to be included in the fare of passengers.
Turning the forwald half of the old air seat lounge into a cinema and at the aft section into a video games room, with X-box and the like. She sailed up the east of Tasmania, keeping close so passengers could view the ship, but also so people could see the ship from the island. She arrived to much fanfare as thousands of people lined the Mersey to see their latest ferry arrive for the first time. She was greeted by Tasmanian premier Jim Bacon, meeting her Captain Jim Lewis as he came off the ship to heavy media attention.
The ship remained in Sydney for 5 days, completing berthing trials at the newly constructed ramp at Darling Harbor.
Ahead of her was one of the ports fire tugs spraying water and a heritage tug, the Waratah to send Spirit of Tasmania III on her maiden voyage. Above were news helicopters filming her for national news. They were very quickly pulled up by ship staff and taken off by water police, and later charged. During the voyage a 50kn wind came up, slowing the ship.
To add to the delay, one of her four engines was overheating and had to be shut down for a period of time. TT-Line blamed the requirement to take on a pilot when entering and leaving Sydney until their captains got their exemption ticket. After a month or so things settled down and the ship was able to meet the time schedule. A few hours into the voyage she struck heavy weather. Winds were blowing over 50kns and swell of 10m. At about 3am as the ship was entering Banks Strait, off Gabo Island.
A huge wave struck the vessel, snapping a weld on the bottom of the upper loading door. It pushed the door back, bending it in. The vessel slowed further to reduce sea spray going into the car deck, she arrived in Devonport eight hours late. Spirit of Tasmania III had been due to depart that day, but had to cancel due to the damage. A crane came in and divers connected the cable to the car and it was lifted out.
Once placed back on the Sydney run, she maintained only two return crossings a week, for the quiet winter season, until the beginning of September when she was back to three a week.. Over the first year of route, the service to Sydney was under preforming. But by May it was becoming harder for TT-Line to continue, with rising fuel costs and low passenger numbers.
Some other companies had inspected the ship, including Brittany Ferries. Once she had arrived, the next day she entered the Garden Island dry dock in Sydney harbor.
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