Another day at the sea without much news so I thought I could give you some info about the ship instead.
M/V Hondius is brand new and this is her first trip to the Antarctica. The ship can handle 170 passengers and is simply built for polar expeditions and is classified with polar class 6. That doesn’t mean she is a icebreaker, its just means that she has some features from other ships like reinforced and isolated hull so it can handle some ice but it cant climb up and crack ice like an icebreaker. Polar class 6 also demand that we have some more spare parts than you normally have, for example every passenger got their own life west and survival suite, the ship has extra many and strong search light and so on. The ship has two life boats who each take 100 persons and please, don’t ask me how because they look really tiny. It also has 4 life rafts which is nice but in case of emergency, I choose one of the life boats!
The ship has two engines who generates 4200 Kw and if they brake down we have two spare engines. The march speed is 12 knots but if you run both engines it is possible to get it up to 15 knots.
In the lower decks there is huge amount of food stored. Accordingly to the head chef we will eat 15 000 portions of food during this trip and of course we have food for more days, in case of something happens. Even so the chef decides from day to day what the dinner should be which is pretty impressive! Water is another thing which we spend a lot, the ship can create 60 ton of fresh water per day, it doesn’t tastes good but its really nice that all water on the ship is drinkable and that you doesn’t have to bother with plastic bottles.
For more information, check out Oceanwides website with some detailed facts about the ships and of courses, tours if you are interested
