Russian Ghost Ship Wanders Atlantic
This bad boy has been adrift since February and is believed (hoped)– sunk somewhere in the Atlantic.
Here is an old picture of the Lyubov Orlova as she sat in Neko Harbor, Antarctica around 2000.
This 4300-ton (GT) Yugoslavian made cruise ship is something of a Flying Dutchman these days on the Atlantic. Named after the first recognized star of Soviet cinema, famous theater actress and a gifted singer, she was built-in 1975 for the Cold War Soviet Far East Shipping Company based in Vladivostok. After the fall of the Soviet Union she continued taking tourists on cruises in the polar regions (she had a strengthened hull) until she was sold in 1999. Since then she has been registered in the Cook Islands and has gone downhill. After running aground in 2006 she was by 2012 a derelict in St Johns Newfoundland, with her company in arrears.
Her sister ship, MV Clipper Adventurer, is also known to have a storied reputation. On 27 August 2010, ran aground of a supposedly uncharted rock in the waters of Nunavut’s Coronation Gulf during a cruise. It was later found that the rock was indeed a known hazard and had already been properly reported by the Canadian Hydrographic Service.
Sold to creditors she was being towed to the Dominican Republic for breaking up, valued at about $800,000 in reclaimable metals…but on 24 January 2013 she broke her tow ropes. After being chased around by her towboat off the coast of Canada and finally regained her. The ship not being worth the money being poured into her recovery, the tow boat cut the line on February 7th in International waters some 250-miles from North America.
Since then Orlova has wandered the Atlantic. Three weeks later a spy satellite from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, spotted her some 1300 miles off the coast of Ireland. At the end of February she was 700 miles from the coast of Kerry, having traveled halfway across the Atlantic on her own.
The Flying Dutchman is a legendary ghost ship that can never make port, doomed to sail the oceans forever. Perhaps she has a new
In March her EPIRB went off. Now these distress beacons only sound if they are submerged so the popular thinking is that she went to Davy Jones, but who knows. However there were sightings of her adrift as late as March 12 –– more than a week after her
EPRIB went off, which leads to the speculation that some passing boarder/ghost/rat may have just kicked the beacon over the side. Her last known position was 49°49.12N 36°15.44W where the 37-year old ship was still very much afloat, with no crew, no lights, no nothing.
Current thinking could put her anywhere from arctic Norway to North Africa…..the wordpress
blog where is lova is tracking her as we speak
Specs
Tonnage: 4,251 GT
Length: 295 ft (90 m)
Beam: 53 ft (16 m)
Draught: 15 ft (4.6 m)
Ice class: L3
Installed power: Diesel engines; 5,280 bhp (combined)
Propulsion: Two shafts
Speed: 11 knots (20 km/h; 13 mph)
Capacity: 110 passengers
Crew: 70 (maximum)