After a period in use as an accommodation ship off Shetland, FleetPro Ocean has secured a charter for its Ocean Endeavour for the summer of 2015. She will operate a series of cruises in the Canadian Arctic and on the Greenland coast, including two Northwest Passage voyages between June and September 2015.
Ocean Endeavour was built in Poland in 1982 as Konstantin Simonov for Russia’s Black Sea Shipping Company. She was later transferred to the Baltic Shipping Company and in 1996, while still in Russian ownership, was renamed Francesca and registered in Cyprus.
From 2001 to 2009 she operated as The Iris for Israeli Mano Maritime, but was then sold to Katarina Cruises of Finland, for whom she underwent a major refit before entering service as Kristina Katarina. Katarina Cruises withdrew from ocean cruising in 2013, and the ship was sold to FleetPro Ocean. At 12,907gt, she is one of a series of seven similar ships built for the Russians.
