Orion visit starts cruise ship season

State-of-the art expedition ship National Geographic Orion will begin the cruise ship season in Gisborne on Monday morning when she docks alongside Berth 7 at Eastland Port. She was in the Bay last summer with the much bigger Silver Muse, which will also call here several times this summer. Picture by Liam Clayton

The busy cruise ship season kicks off on Monday when Eastland Port welcomes back the National Geographic Orion, described as a state-of-the-art expedition ship.

She  begins a cruise season that will see 25 cruise ships of varying sizes and capacities call into Gisborne between now and mid-March. National Geographic Orion, designed to safely explore the remote regions of the planet, will make half-a-dozen visits here herself this summer.

She carries a crew of 75 and can accommodate around 100 passengers.

The ship will dock alongside the Gisborne wharf at around 7.30am on Monday, after visiting White Island. She will sail for Napier about 10pm that night.

At 103 metres in length, with a 14 metre beam (width), she can travel at a top speed of 15.5 knots (nearly 29 kmh).

The ship is registered in Nassau in the Bahamas.

MV Orion was built by Cassens shipyard in Germany in 2002 for the Marshall Islands-registered company Explorer Maritime.

In March 2013 Orion Expeditions was acquired by the US-based small-ship operator Lindblad Expeditions, which owns five ships and charters a further five and operates cruises to a variety of destinations.

The MV Orion was renamed National Geographic Orion in March 2014.

■ Just the year before, on the evening of January 29, 2013, the MV Orion rescued a round-the-world sailor, Alain Delord, from his liferaft which had been located 487 nautical miles south-south-west of Hobart in the Southern Ocean. He had abandoned his yacht after it lost its mast and the hull was damaged in rough weather.

The ship was on its way from Antarctica to the world heritage-listed Macquarie Island when it responded to the call for help.

The captain of the Orion, Mike Taylor, undertook the 1500 km rescue in moderate to rough seas from Antarctica’s Commonwealth Bay.

In a race against time, the ship successfully tracked the sailor’s emergency radio beacon and effected the rescue with just an hour of daylight left.

■ The Heritage Adventurer will be the next cruise ship to call here, on November 18.