11 January 2012
Spirit
of
France
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P&O Ferries to take Delivery of Second New Ship.
P&O Ferries will on Tuesday 24 January take delivery of its second new €180 million ship, Spirit of France, during a handover ceremony at the STX Europe shipyard in Rauma, Finland.
Spirit of France will then commence its 1,400 mile voyage to Dover under the command of Captain Steve Johnson, senior master.
The ship will arrive in Dover on Saturday 28 January and will undergo berthing trials in both Dover and Calais before entering service on the premier Channel crossing prior to mid-February.
At more than 47,000 gross tons and 213 metres in length, Spirit of France, and sister ship Spirit of Britain, which began service last year, are the largest ferries ever built for the Dover Strait. Their combined cost of €360 million is the largest investment ever made by P&O Ferries.
P&O Ferries operates 22 ships on routes to Northern Ireland, Ireland, Holland, Belgium and France, carrying more than nine million passengers, more than one and a half million cars and two million trucks a year.
Spirit of France particulars:
Gross tonnage: 47,592 tons. Length: 213m. Beam: 31.43m. Number of decks: 12.
Capacity: 170 x 15m lorries + 195 cars (or 1,000 cars). 2,000 passengers.
Picture shows the Spirit of France looking magnificent as she moves gently between islands in Finland.
There is a thread in our Forum on the breaking news about the Cruise Ship Costa Concordia. The stunning ship has run aground and capsized off the Italian coast. The Costa ships are regular visitors to Dover. Pictures here on the thread plus LIVE webcam.
Click...http://www.doverforum.com/letters/viewtopic.php?id=9256
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MILES AND KILOMETRES TOGETHER –
A SIGN OF ENTENTE CORDIALE?
Port of Dover Police host French students visit.
Port of Dover Police came to the rescue of Nancy Hughes, a French school teacher from Calais who had been frantically searching for a road traffic sign depicting miles per hour and kilometres per hour side by side on the same sign.
It came to light that the road traffic sign was to form part of an educational quiz during an organised visit to Dover and Sergeant Sally Miller from the Port of Dover Neighbourhood Police Unit took up the mission to locate and photograph the sign which one of her colleagues had spotted along Jubilee Way.
Sally and her colleague, PC Martin Dadd met the children on their arrival at the Port just before Christmas. With high winds gusting and torrential rain, many of the youngsters were relieved to reach dry land.
Commented Sergeant Sally Miller: “They experienced a bumpy crossing but soon perked up when we greeted them with tins of sweeties and other goodies. They had great fun trying on our police helmets and hats, taking photographs to remind them of their day in Dover.”
The children were enthralled, listening to Sally explain in excellent French how she and her team policed the Port. “I am delighted and impressed that they all seemed to understand my French but I’m still not sure if it wasn't just the sweets that were keeping them quiet!"
The children visited the Dover Discovery Centre and returned to France later that day.
Mrs Hughes said; “We had a most enjoyable day in spite of the weather. We are grateful to Sally and everyone at Port of Dover for making it such a memorable trip for us all and for taking the time to find the traffic sign I was so determined to find.”
Photograph shows the children from College Lucien Vadez, Calais... with Martin Dadd from Port of Dover Neighbourhood Police Unit.
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The same foreboding moon as mentioned below is seen differently the following morning and offers hope in the new dawn of a new day. Here it hangs in the early morning light above Dover Grammar School for Boys. The moon looked enormous as it sank quite quickly behind the trees. Picture very long range indeed.
Simon Jones of the BBC bringing us the latest news tuesday night on the Seafrance collapse, all done by the light of a gloomy gothic moon hanging over the harbour, which somehow captured the miserable mood of recent job losses. But out of the bad news, new hope has emerged in the shape of the previously mentioned new service to be run jointly by DFDS and LD Lines...however this good news is marred by the oddest of odd situations, in that the new service to Calais will be run under a French Flag employing only French workers. An odd situation indeed. Is it a ploy to satisfy the very strong French trade unions?
MP Charlie Elphicke, looking stonefaced and grim, said on the same TV channel, that the prospect of a new route to Calais was...
" ...great news, but it's a crazy idea to run it under a French Flag with only French workers"
SeaFrance goes into Liquidation.
Monday: The sad news has reached us that SeaFrance has been officially liquidated by a French court and told to cease trading, with the loss of approx 800 jobs overall, 130 of those here in the UK. This sad news is what many of us expected, although we all lived in hope of a revival. The offer by staff to run the operation was rejected by the French Court and declared not acceptable. This is a bad blow for those here in Dover currently employed by the company and it leaves only one firm operating the Dover to Calais route...P&O.
The three sleek and attractive SeaFrance vessels above were pictured recently in Calais, November in fact, and have not been seen since in Dover.
See the latest news on the thread in our Forum...with latest official statements from the Leader of Dover District Council Paul Watkins (pictured left) and also a joint statement from DFDS/ LD LINES just in.....
It's all here........nine pages of comment in fact, see page 8 for the aforementioned statements.
http://www.doverforum.com/letters/viewtopic.php?id=8542
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