This post is for my naval architect friends!
I suppose I should have realized that there would be a lot of boats and ships along the coast of Norway, but I never expected as many interesting ones as we’ve seen, from LNG tankers to very short and tall fishing boats.
We’re sailing on the Havila Castor, which was built in 2022. It’s 124m long, with a beam of 22m and max draft of 5.3m, has 179 cabins and can carry up to 640 passengers. It was built in Tersan Shipyard in Turkey. It’s powered by LNG, which they say reduces emissions by 38% (presumably compared to a diesel), and also has batteries for operating in sensitive areas like Geiranger fjord or supplementing the main engine.
I’ve been very impressed with the ship’s maneuverability. With bow thrusters and two trainable propeller pods, it can come into incredibly tight berths and turns practically on a dime. In ports where we aren’t staying long, they only put a bowline ashore, holding the stern in with a propeller, while offloading cargo with a forklift running in and out of the cargo hold.
The other line doing the same route is Hurtigruten. Their ships are somewhat older designs – the one below was built in 2002.
Beyond Our French Adventure 