Silja Line's Finnjet to provide emergency housing for Louisiana medical school

Ferry appears unlikely to return to Baltic waters

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Silja Line is to send its 33,000 GRT car/passenger ferry GTS Finnjet to the Gulf Coast of the United States to serve as emergency accommodation for a medical school in the region struck by Hurricane Katrina at the end of last month.
      The vessel will provide housing for staff and students at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, which has been moved to a site alongside the Mississippi in Baton Rouge, roughly 100 miles upstream from its former home in New Orleans.
      Finnjet, which has around 500 cabins and an overall carrying capacity of just under 1,800, will not be used to accommodate the homeless of the region, but will provide a temporary replacement for faculty facilities destroyed by the hurricane.
     
The chartering period is to last at least six months. Finnjet will sail from Rostock for Baton Rouge on Tuesday of this week, and she is estimated to arrive in the area on October 2nd. The move means that departures on the ship's normal roundtrip Rostock-Tallinn-St. Petersburg route this week will be cancelled.
      As it happens, the vessel was to have made its last run on this route on September 23rd, but now departures between 19th and 22nd of this month will also be affected. Passengers with bookings are being contacted.
     
Finnjet was built in 1977, originally with gas turbine engines, and was at the time among the fastest vessels afloat, with a top speed in excess of 30 knots.
      Fuel consumption at those speeds was, however, prohibitive. A more economical conventional diesel-electric propulsion unit was added during a 1981 refit, and for nearly 20 years from her maiden voyage the vessel was in regular year-round service on the Helsinki-Travemünde route.
      She has also sailed between Helsinki and Tallinn and on cruises to Riga, before taking up service on a summer run between Rostock and St.Petersburg, calling en route at Tallinn.
      This is not the first occasion when Finnjet has been rented out as floating accommodation, although it is the first such "crisis management" task. In May of this year, the vessel served as a hotel ship for the entourage of U.S. President George W. Bush during Bush's visit to the Latvian capital, Riga.
     
The decision to charter out the ship will doubtless be welcomed by Silja Line and its parent company Sea Containers, as plans reported in the Finnish newspaper Turun Sanomat only a few days previously had suggested the vessel would no longer return to the summer route next year, owing to problems with profitability, and that she would be laid up in Falmouth in the U.K. pending a possible sale.
      Sea Containers and Silja have both experienced financial heavy weather of late, and whilst Finnjet has carried more passengers this summer than last, the operations have not generated the desired revenue in an increasingly competitive market and with elevated fuel costs.
      Silja Line posted an operating loss before non-recurring charges of around USD 19 million in the first quarter of 2005, and half-year losses reported in August were in excess of USD 20 million. It has also been reported that the Silja Line letter of intent to build two additional Ro-Pax vessels at the Aker Finnyards shipyard has expired.
     
In the current climate it is thought to be unlikely, therefore, that the ferry will make a return to the Baltic traffic.
      Further details can be had from the MarineLog link and that of FinnjetWeb, an unofficial but apparently well-informed website and forum run by a fan-club of Finnjet enthusiasts.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Finnish ferry operators post heavy losses as margins tighten (8.6.2005)
  Silja Line and Aker Finnyards sign letter of intent for two vessels (4.5.2005)

Links:
  Silja to retire Finnjet (MarineLog.com 12/9/2005)
  Silja Line: Press Release
  Silja Line: GTS Finnjet
  Sea Containers Ltd
  FinnjetWeb

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