Mexican offshore company Demar Instaladora has sold for recycling an elderly cruiseship it has used in an offshore accommodation role for nearly two decades.
The 15,400-gt Enchanted Capri (built 1975) was handed over to a scrapyard in the Mexican port of Coatzacoalcos this week, TradeWinds has learned.
Sources familiar with the current status of the ship described the company that will scrap the ship as being a local scrap metal company that “occasionally dabbles in demolishing smaller offshore vessels”.
Demar had been trying to find a trading buyer for the ship for several years but with little success.
Cruiseship brokers familiar with the 937-berth ship described it as being past the stage where it could be viable in the cruise trades.
That did not stop a US-based upstart from showing a strong interest in the ship in 2018. Miami-based Cruise Retirement said then that it was finalising a deal to buy the ship and turn it into a globe-roaming floating retirement home.
The plan was for elderly passengers to live on the ship year-round as homeowners of 250 residences while paying a monthly fee for the ship's included services such as dining, housekeeping and maintenance.
Cruise Retirement said it had gone so far as lining up a shipyard in the Bahamas to carry out the refitting work, but was never heard from again.
Sinister past
The Enchanted Capri was originally built as the Azerbaydzhan, one of five identical cruise ferries that Finnish shipbuilder Wartsila built for the Soviet Union in the mid 1970s.
In peacetime, the ships would operate as Black Sea and Mediterranean ferries and cruiseships. But, beneath the veneer of luxury passenger carriers, they were robust ships with strengthened vehicle decks designed to carry tanks and troops during times of war.
For much of their lives under Soviet ownership, the quintet was used exclusively in cruising roles, spending most of the time on charter to European cruise operators. They were put through extensive conversions into pure cruiseships when Cold War tensions began to easy in the late 1980s.
The break up of the Soviet Union saw the ships sold onto other owners, with the Azerbaydzhan sailing for Commodore Cruise Lines until Demar acquired it in 2003.
Only one of the five ships — the Gruziya (built 1975) — remains active, sailing in the Mediterranean as Salamis Cruises’ Salamis Filoxenia.
Others in the class have either been scrapped or are languishing in lay-up.
