GTS Finnjet proving to be financial nightmare for Indian shipbreakers’ yard

Travelling Finnish Finnjet fan managed to salvage ship’s log from shrinking ferry carcass

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The demolition of GTS Finnjet, once the fastest passenger ferry in the world, is nearing its end at the Alang breakers’ yard in Western India.
      Two-thirds of the ship’s hull has already been dismantled, and all the fittings and furnishings have long since disappeared.
      Around a hundred workers toil away around the ship’s carcass, taking it apart for their approximately two-euro-a-day salary in a searing 40°C heat. The work has continued for nearly a year now, and it is estimated to go on for another two to three months.
     
The former speed champion of the Baltic Sea seems to retain her style until the bitter end.
      According to information acquired by Helsingin Sanomat, for the gigantic ship scrapyard Rishi Ship Breakers, the GTS Finnjet has been possibly the most troublesome exercise in the company’s history.
      GTS Finnjet has already cost the company in excess of EUR seven million. The non-profitability of the deal results from the slowness of the demolition work and the steepling nosedive of the price of scrap iron and steel.
      After the GTS Finnjet nightmare, the company wows not to purchase another passenger vessel for demolition ever again.
     
Salomon Kaukiainen, 23, of Helsinki will remain one of the last Finns to have spent a night on board GTS Finnjet.
      “We dozed off on the deck chairs. We could not be bothered to go inside, as it was so mouldy and hot in there.”
      Finnjet fan Kaukiainen spent a night on the ship with a Finnish-German entourage in August of last year. Kaukiainen wanted to realise his dream while there was still something left of the vessel.
      At high tide the group that spent the night on Finnjet’s deck were denied access to the shore, but that did not matter. “We shared stories of the biggest, fastest, and fanciest of ships”, whose gas turbine engines accelerated her to a speed of 30 knots.
     
At five o’clock in the morning the water receded. The first thing the tourists saw was the mountains of loose items from the ship piled up next to her carcass by the demolition crew.
      “They had collected absolutely everything. I suppose their idea was to sell them on the local market or something. There were videotapes, and even a Finnish edition of the boardgame Trivial Pursuit”, Kaukiainen remembers.
     
Kaukiainen in turn managed to salvage the ship's log that describes one of its final voyages from the Bahamas to Italy.
      Now the log rests on Kaukiainen’s desk in Helsinki. Does it contain interesting stories, the captain’s innermost thoughts on the fate of the vessel?
      “No. Just basic data. Time and place and the speed. That sort of stuff”, Kaukiainen says.
      There is no such thing as a free log: even the papers cost USD 7.50 a kilo.
      The ship's fans would have liked to take some other more solid bits of the vessel home, too, but the demolition staff were having none of this.
     
When constructed in 1977, GTS Finnjet was the fastest and largest passenger car ferry in the world.
      It was sold when Silja Line’s owner hit economic difficulties and even the new owner experienced the same fate.
      Various movements and organisations tried to salvage Finnjet from being demolished, but finally in the spring of 2008 it was sold to the Indian breakers’ yard in Alang.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Attempts to get GTS Finnjet back to Finland continue (15.8.2008)
  Demolition of GTS Finnjet is well under way in India (1.10.2008)

Links:
  GTS Finnjet (Wikipedia)

Helsingin Sanomat