A 30-year-old expedition cruiseship with a troubled past has found new buyers after repairs of damage from collision with a Venezuelan warship a year ago.
The 8,400-gt RCGS Resolute (built 1991) is changing hands for about €11m ($13m), a cruise market source familiar with the matter told TradeWinds.
Buying interest is said to have been intense, with seven parties inspecting at a facility on the Greek island of Salamina, where the Finnish-built ship has been moored for several months.
The higher-than-expected price fetched by the RCGS Resolute derives in part from global trends in the cruise industry, but it also reflects factors relating to the particular ship in question.
As the world slowly gets a grip on the Covid-19 pandemic, especially in wealthy countries in which it finds its customers, the battered cruiseship owners and operators are looking towards recovery.
As part of that revival, the RCGS Resolute was sold on the back of secured and steady long-term employment.
The source said vessel will be employed in the winter by Heritage Expeditions, a New Zealand-based travel firm. During summers, when the weather is good in the northern hemisphere, German charterers will take over management.
“No one would be willing to pay that kind of money without this employment,” the person told TradeWinds.
The RCGS Resolute had fetched just $600,000 in an auction in Curacao in June last year, at the height of the coronavirus crisis.
However, that shouldn’t be considered a standard sale. TradeWinds understands that the only party that put forward a bid for the vessel in the Curacao auction was affiliated with the ship’s original owner, a German foundation.
A few months before the auction, Bahamas-registered owner Bunnys Adventure & Cruise Shipping paid $3.93m to release the ship from arrest in Argentina, where creditors detained it following the collapse of its Canadian charterer One Ocean Expeditions.
The RCGS Resolute was on a repositioning trip after its release when it collided with Venezuelan patrol boat Naiguata (built 2009).
The ice-classed cruiseship sustained only minor damage but the Venezuelan vessel sank, without loss of human life.
The German interests that sold the ship earlier this month for about €11m are believed to be be quitting the cruise business. The RCGS Resolute's new owners are believed to be German as well.
