July 2024:
Recently I have reorganised the car a bit, I added some gadgets to be able to charge all my equipment on the road. As I had already planned a long road trip, I felt the need to test this new setup and decided to do it at the Belgian coast and combine this with some shipping photography on a 2-day testing trip.
Day 1:
I left after the morning rush hour and arrived in Calais beach to see some of the newer and older ferries sailing in and out of Calais old and new ferryport. At the end of the Western pier with its iconic small harbourlight, I suddenly met a familiar face, George Holland was also there to photograph some ships with a friend. George is a fellow ship historian and photographer, see his Youtube channel below!
The harbourlight is actually one of the best spots to photograph ships in Calais and the first ship on my list was the Oscar Wilde of Irish Ferries.
About the ship:
The Oscar Wilde was built as the Spirit of Britain for P&O ferries and entered service in 2011 on the Calais to Dover route. Her sistership Spirit of France would follow later. I personally sailed many times on the Spirit of Britain and found her to be pleasant to sail on, her layout is perfect for the 90 minute crossings she was built for and the forward facing lounge was usually the first place I would go to for a seat near the front windows. Her service for P&O has been pretty busy but uneventful, her older fleetmates would slowly but surely be taken out of service and by 2023 the first of 2 new double-ended ferries entered service. Suddenly P&O announced that the Spirit of Britain after 12 years of service was sold in 2023, she was surprisingly sent to Irish Ferries for use on the same Calais to Dover route. Irish Ferries sent her to drydock and renamed her Oscar Wilde, she entered service for Irish Ferries just before the summer in 2024.
More ships would be passing before my lens that day like Isle of Inishmore, P&O Pioneer, Côte D' Opale and Isle of Inisheer.
The occasional seagull would curiously be passing by to see if we had any food of course!
By late afternoon we said goodbye and I drove to Zeebrugge where my special spot for taking photos was still accessible, so I waited a bit to see the port itself and eventually the Vasco Da Gama when she would be leaving Zeebrugge where she had been docked for a cruise call. The weather was windy and grey but at least it was dry, and the seals were also relaxing on the small beach next to me.
About the ship:
The Vasco Da Gama was built in 1992 as he Statendam for Holland America Line, she was one of 4 ships of the so called S-class or Statendam-class in the HAL fleet. In 2015 she was transferred to P&O Australia as their Pacific Eden until 2019 when she was sold to CMV to become their Vasco Da Gama. The CMV story was short lived however as in 2020 the pandemic caused CMV to go bankrupt and the ship ended up on the market. Being still pretty young, she was eventually taken over by Nicko cruises and has been operating for this line ever since.
Of course now I needed something to eat, but most importantly a place to sleep ... so since I know the area pretty well, I went to the small square between the Seafront museum and the Westhinder 2 lightship in Zeebrugge village, once there it was getting late and I only worked on the laptop a bit before going to sleep, so far ... all the gadgets I had added to the car worked just fine! These included a 12V adapter with 2 normal power outlets so you can actually use a normal household power cable and plug it into your car and another adapter for the 12V plug that doubled the outlets and added another USB-C outlet. With these adapters I can now use the dashcam in combination with the electric cooler or charge my DJI Mavic Pro drone, or charge the Canon battery or even the MacBook Pro, any combination is possible now. All other devices like the DJI Osmo Action and the DJI Mini 3 drone can be charged with normal USB charging cables so with this setup, I can actually charge all devices while driving.
Day 2:
I was woken up by some people that started to setup the market on the spot where I was parked, so I got dressed, drove to the roadside near the spotters corner and waited a bit longer before I got ready to see the cruise ship Aurora arrive, the view was good but the weather ... not so much! I started raining so bad that I had to wipe the lens of camera after every shot, nevertheless I was able to take some decent shots and when she was docked, I ran for the comfort of my car and went to meet Johan ... another ship historian ... in nearby Wenduine for some morning coffee before going back home.
About the ship:
The Aurora was the new flagship for P&O cruises from 2000 when she entered service. She was basically replacing the scrapped Canberra, later on she was joined by some more newly built ships with Arcadia (ordered for Cunard as Queen Victoria but finished as Arcadia for P&O) being the most important one in 2005. In her first year she was considered to be a big ship, however ... by today's standards ... she is pretty small and she is no longer the flagship. At the moment of writing she is still operated by P&O cruises but her biggest change came in 2014 when she changed colors to the new blue funnel and Union Flag colors of the P&O brand. Today she is operated as an adult-only ship together with Arcadia.
THE END
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