Biography Maria ferry

That line lasted only two months, and closed in October of the year due to tremendous losses. Who cares: now this ferry serves the night line between Ireland and Wales. And at the beginning of the year the new company St. What kind of ferry is this - "Princess Maria"? You can read a little about it for now. First of all, the fact that this is not a new ferry is almost thirty years old.

Meanwhile, "Princess Maria" is a very famous and sign of steam in the ferry and cruise industry. The construction of this ferry marked the beginning of the era of "cruise ferries", or "superferry". The concept of cruise ferries is to combine the transportation of people and cars from point A to point B C with an almost cruise set of entertainment on board. When in the year Silja Line received for the Helsinki line - Stockholm New ferry Finlandia, this was the first such steam in the world.

It was followed by others, but for almost ten years it was precisely the ferry of Finland that remained the flagship of the ferry lines of Scandinavia and the pride of Finland. In the year, the Finland was replaced by Silja Serenade steam - a vessel constructively unique at that time, a ship with a promenade street. For twenty years, Silja Serenade has been successfully working between Finland and Sweden, and the Finlandia ferry, giving way to the new ship, in the same year changed the owner, name and region of work.

The ferry was put on the second most important in Scandinavia, the ferry line Copenhagen - Oslo. For twelve years, the ferry served this line, and six more years - distant ferry lines between Scotland and the Scandinavian countries. In the year, Queen of Scandinavia worked on the Bergen -Newcastle line, after the closure of which the ferry was left without work.

Further - periodic work in the form of floating hotels in different ports, and finally a new owner and a new life under the name "Princess Maria". On Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, the ferry goes from St. Petersburg to Helsinki, where he arrives the next morning. On Tuesdays, Princess Maria performs a night mini-triumph from St. Petersburg. Things did not allow me to go on this ferry in the first two months of his work, but on June 13 I finally found myself on board.

I must say that the most significant drawback of the line are the queues for registration at the St. Petersburg Maritime Station. For passengers of the cabins of the highest categories, separate registration is organized; It passes much faster. The sea station itself is a unique building: in our country there are not many sea stations, and only one, in St. Petersburg, is so large.

It has a restaurant, cafe, hotel, conference center, souvenir shops, bank branch. Nearby is a parking lot on which ferry passengers can leave their car for free. In recent years, the Maritime Station was practically not used in the winter months, but now, with the launch of the St. Petersburg - Helsinki line, this should change. So, the ferry "Princess Maria".

Length - meters, width - 28 meters, sediment - almost 7 meters, maximum speed - 22 knots 40 kilometers per hour, capacity - passengers with sleeping places and cars. Parks of this size never worked on the St. Petersburg -Helsinki line. The ferry crew is from Finland, Russia and the Baltic countries. The main language on the ferry, including inside the crew during mooring operations and so on - Russian.

Inside the ferry, the central lobby of the ferry with persistent information and the excursion bureau is certainly not the atrium of a modern cruise vessel, but quite spacious, which allows you to avoid crowds on the one hand, and on the other hand, it is worthily to accept passengers when landing. By the way, about the excursion bureau: in it you can buy excursions in Russian to choose from: 1 sightseeing in Helsinki and 2 on a high -speed ferry in Tallinn, but the last tour can be canceled in bad weather, when the movement of high -speed ferries between Helsinki and Tallinn ceases.

And this is not at all the worst option. In one of the recent flights, the tourists left for Tallinn, but could not return from there to the ferry due to worsening weather, and went from there to St. Petersburg. Eh, steam, even though you are Russian, but in some ways you are part of Finland. Namely, in Finland, you can only buy my favorite pear cider. It is also sold in the bars "Princess Mary." So, we will start getting to know a ferry from bars.

There are five of them. Navigators Bar - an English style pub with a choice of beer and live music. In the Columbus night club, evening music programs are held. The rest of the time it is a calm spacious salon with a bar. Two more bars are located on the open decks of the ship. On the sixth deck, in front of an inclined panoramic glass, through which a view of the ferry opens, there is a casino, and with it there is another bar.

Two restaurants work on the ferry: according to the vapor tradition, one of them Seven Seas Restaraunt offers dishes in the form of a “Swedish table”, the other Explorers Restaraunt - “a la cards”.In the mornings in Explorers Restaraunt, a buffet is set for passengers of the cabids of the highest categories of Deluxe and Commodore. To dinner, the "Swedish table" in the restaurant "Seven Seven" is served for free vodka and champagne.

And the wine can be poured independently. Another public catering point is the Bake and Coffee cafe. There are salads, sandwiches and drinks. Well, what was especially pleased - there is always a hot hodgepodge, which must be poured yourself. Near Bake and Coffee is a children's corner. In one part of this corner, the children draw, and in the other, they move from the hill into balls.

There are no rules for a respectable cigar bar, in which, according to the organizers, there are no rules, and you can dance at the racks and tables of the club in action will be lower. In the Duty Fri store-the traditional choice of alcohol, sweets, some of the clothes. Unfortunately, so far there are no souvenirs with a ferry of Princess Maria or the symbols of the company.

In restaurants, bars and in the store, that is, everywhere on a ferry, they freely accept rubles, euros and credit cards. Everywhere they speak Russian. On the ninth deck there are a conference center in case of a ferry of business events and a special quiet salon for passengers of the highest categories of Commodore Lounge. There is a sauna with a pool on a ferry, but in June they were still closed for repairs.

On the ferry there are cabins of four categories. The highest categories, whose passengers enjoy the right of separate registration in the Marine Station, a separate breakfast with champagne on the ferry and the Commodore Lounge salon, include the cabins of Dluks and Commodore classes. Class of the Commodore class is depicted in the following photo. Below you can see how standard external and internal cabins look like.

True, they were photographed after arriving in St. Petersburg, so that the view of these cabins is not quite ceremonial, but giving them an idea. These are standard ferry cabins with a bathroom and two or four beds. There are also cabins on the ferry, adapted for people in wheelchairs, as well as cabins for allergies. There are a lot of open walking decks on the ferry, but for some reason, only about half of them are open for passengers.

The same open decks that are located in the bow of the ferry and from which the best review is provided, are closed. But I discovered that the Commodore Lounge has an exit to a nasal walking deck closed for passengers. Having decided that this deck is pronounced for passengers, the Deluxe and Commodore cabin, I proceeded with a clear conscience, and observed from there the departure of the ferry and its entrance to the sea canal.

There was no one else on this deck, the passengers crowded closer to the stern. But when I tried to enter the Commodore Lounge, I found that the door did not open outside. That is, this deck was still closed to everyone. Well, okay, climbed over the fence and ended up on an ordinary open deck with all passengers. But at first I enjoyed the departure from St. Petersburg and the sea channel with, one might say, the absolutely private part of the ship.

Honestly - I don’t understand why to close such a wonderful overview site for people? Back in the XIX century, St. Petersburg was not available to large sea vessels, since the Neva lip was a continuous agriculture in many ways now. Therefore, large trading ships reached only Kronstadt, where the goods were overloaded to small vessels, which delivered goods to the capital. Moreover, often the transportation of these goods from Kronstadt to St.

Petersburg was more expensive than their delivery from abroad to Kronstadt. Not wanting to put up with such a state of affairs, the famous engineer, the owner of the Putilov plant Nikolai Ivanovich Putilov decided to dig a deep-sea channel from Kronstadt the island of Kotlin to St. Petersburg so that large ships could enter the Neva. State financing was received, and the construction of the channel began in the year.

However, soon the state stopped financing the work, and Putilov began to pay for the construction of the channel from his pocket.

It all ended very sadly - Putilov was ruined and soon died. The channel was nevertheless completed without Putilov, and opened in the year. Despite all the obstacles, a person did the work of his life. Although I was once a dispute with a friend, the head of one company, who claimed that Putilov behaved irresponsibly, and due to his fixation on one project, devastated all his enterprises.

Well, however, probably there is this. But the truth is that now we have a deep -sea sea canal. From a year to this day, the sea channel uninterruptedly passes large vessels with sediment to eleven meters in St. Petersburg and back. Only during the First World War was the channel was not temporarily used. The length of the channel is about thirty kilometers, however, most of it is actually a deep -sea fairway in the Neva lip, and the “classic canal” part between the Gutuyevsky and the gunboat is much shorter.

It is this part of the channel that the ship falls after sending from St. Petersburg. About an hour and a half after the departure from St. Petersburg, the island of Kotlin and the city of Kronstadt passes the ferry. On the island of Peter I, a fortress is based on the protection of St. Petersburg from enemies, as well as fortifications of the forts on bulk islands around Kotlin.

Now in Kronstadt there is a naval base, and until recently the city itself was closed for free visit. In the year from the north to Kotlin, a dam was brought up, connecting the island with the mainland. The construction of a dam and tunnel connecting Kotlin with the mainland from the south is almost completed.