 Ville de Taurus |
Around-the-World in 70 days - One way voyages between the Far East and Central America |
| Hong Kong (Day 1) and Chiwan, China (2); Kaohsiung, Taiwan (3); Ningbo (4), Shanghai (5) and Qindao, China (7); Pusan, Korea (8); transpacific to ... |
| ... Ensenada (20) and Manzanillo, Mexico (23); transit the Panama Canal (29); Kingston, Jamaica (31); Santo Domingo (Caucedo terminal), Dominican Republic (33); Puerto Cabello, Venezuela (35); Port of Spain, Trinidad (42); via Cape of Good Hope to Hong Kong (70). |
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The Ville de Taurus --- Passengers: 8 Containers: 4,113 teu Deadweight: 49,238 tons Length: 246 m Speed: 22 knots Built: 1997 Officers & Crew: Int’l Owners & Managers: NSB, German Charterers: CMA CGM, French |
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The 30 sqm double bed cabin (located on the 4th deck, side- and front facing) consisting of a bedroom (bed size 2.00 x 1.4 m), sitting area and bathroom with shower. (Euro) €95 per person double, €110 single occupancy per day. |
 Sitting room and bedroom. (All four cabins have similar layout and furnishings) |
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Three 25 sqm double bed cabins (located on the 4th and 5th decks, side facing) consisting of a bedroom (bed size 2.00 x 1.8 m), sitting area and bathroom with shower. (Euro) €85 per person double, €95 single occupancy per day. |
63-day Roundtrips, And One Way Voyages |
| Hong Kong (Day 1); Durban, South Africa (14); Buenos Aires, Argentina (27); Montevideo, Uruguay (29); Paranagua (32), Sao Francisco do Sul (33), Santos (35) and Rio de Janeiro (37), all in Brazil; transatlantic to ... |
| ... Cape Town (46) and Port Elizabeth, South Africa (48); again across the Indian Ocean to Singapore (60) and back to Hong Kong (63). |
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The MOL Wish (ex Sealand Endeavour) --- Passengers: 8 Containers: 3,681 Deadweight: 44,731 tons Length: 245 m Speed: 24 knots Built: 1995 Officers & Crew: Int’l Owners & Managers: NSB, German Charterers: Mitsui OSK Line, Japan |
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The 30 sqm double bed cabin (located on the 4th deck, side- and front facing) consisting of a bedroom (bed size 2.00 x 1.4 m), sitting area and bathroom with shower. (Euro) €95 per person double, €110 single occupancy per day. |
 Sitting room and bedroom. (All four cabins have similar layout and furnishings) |
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Three 25 sqm double bed cabins (located on the 4th and 5th decks, side facing) consisting of a bedroom (bed size 2.00 x 1.8 m), sitting area and bathroom with shower. (Euro) €85 per person double, €95 single occupancy per day. |
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| Passenger cabins and shared facilities, such as the dining room, lounges, exercise room and swimming pool are located on various decks. Passengers must be fully mobile and able to negotiate the stairs. Front views may be obstructed by the containers stowed on deck. |
| Self service laundry facilities are available. The electrical current is 220/50 AC. A two-prong round adapter and converter are needed for North American appliances. A steward will clean the cabin once a week, more often if necessary. |
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A small onboard shop provides a limited selection of beverages, cigarettes and toiletries at duty free prices. Onboard expenses may be paid for with cash in €/US$. Tipping is at the passenger’s discretion; €/US$3-5 per day is recommended. Telephone, fax and e-mail, but not Internet, connections are available through the Captain’s office. The average port time is one day. |
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Reservations can be made by completing a Registration Form and providing a 25% deposit. The balance of the fare, plus port and vessel fees €275, is payable 70 days before departure. The fare may be paid for by check or wire (by exception only, credit cards may be accepted) in either the basic tariff currency, as quoted by the steamship line, or USD/CAD at the prevailing exchange rate subject to a final adjustment at the time the ticket is issued, a few weeks before departure. Passports must be valid for at least 6 months beyond the anticipated return date, and visas must be obtained, depending on the citizenship and voyage. A Medical Statement of Good Health and International Health and Accident Insurance are required on all voyages, as are the vaccination (or exemption) certificates for yellow fever and cholera. The age limit is 79. Cancellation fees are as follows: over 60 days, loss of deposit; 30-59 days, 50% of the fare. No refund will be made within the 30 days from departure. To protect your investment, Cancellation and Interruption Insurance is highly recommended. Travelex Insurance, covering you from the moment you buy the policy, is available to all Maris customers, worldwide, on our website page “Before You Sail”. And if you buy this insurance policy within three weeks of your initial trip deposit, pre-existing conditions are waived. |
For inquiries and reservations,
please contact us through the Inquiries page.
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| One of the most frequent booking requests coming from our club members, as well as from our customers in general, is for a voyage through the Panama Canal. Afterwards we get comments from those voyages and photos taken during the transit of the canal, which we often publish for you. This time we received something different from our members from Bologna, Italy. Mr. and Mrs. Brandinali have sent us two books and the following letter: |  |
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Dear Maris friends, The Panama Canal story aroused our interest since our first freighter voyage on the Cielo del Canada in 2003. Surfing the Internet, we have found two books digitalized by the University of California. These books, having been written during the canal's construction 100 years ago, one by American authors and the other by an English author, have an historical value. I know you'll enjoy reading them, while remembering your time at sea and experiencing again the astonishing sensation one feels while transiting this waterway wonder of American engineering. Cari saluti, Massimo e Rita Brandinali |
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The literature available on the subject of the Panama Canal is wide-ranging, and we do not wish to make any recommendations. However, we hope you'll enjoy reading a delightful chapter from the English author's, J. Saxon Mills, M. A., book called The Panama Canal, A History and Description of The Enterprise, as we did. "IT was either very careless or very astute of Nature to leave the entire length of the American continent without a central passage from ocean to ocean, or, having provided such a passage at Nicaragua, to allow it to be obstructed again by volcanic action. This imperviousness of the long American barrier had, as we shall see, important economic and political results, and the eventual opening of a waterway will have results scarcely less important. The Panama Canal will achieve, after more than four centuries, the object with which Columbus spread his sails westwards from the port of Palos the provision of a sea-route westwards to China and the Indies. The capture of Constantinople in 1453 by the Turks interrupted the ancient trade routes between East and West. Brigands held up the caravans which plodded across the desert sands from the Euphrates and the Indus, and pirates swarmed in the Mediterranean and Red Sea, intercepting the precious cargoes of silks and jewels and spices consigned to the merchants of Italy. The eyes of all Europe were turned to the Atlantic, and an ocean route westwards to India and the Orient, the existence of which had been fabled from the days of Aristotle, became an economic necessity. Columbus, as every one knows, died in the belief that he had discovered this route, and that the lands he had visited were fringes and islands of the Eastern Asiatic continent. The geographers of those days greatly exaggerated the eastern extension of Asia, with the result that the distance from Europe to China and India was underestimated by at least one-half. This was a fortunate mistake, for it is improbable that if Columbus had known that Cathay and Cipangu (Japan) were a good 12,000 miles westwards from the coast of Spam he would have ventured upon a continuous voyage of that length in the vessels of his time. It was in his fourth voyage (1502) that Columbus first reached and explored the coastline of the isthmus and Central America. He was apparently not the first to land on the isthmus. That distinction belongs either to Alfonso Ojeda, who is said to have reached 'Terra Firma' earlier in 1502, or to Rodrigo de Bastidas, who, we are told, set sail from Cadiz with La Cosa in 1500, and reached the isthmus somewhere near Porto Bello. About the doings of Columbus on the mainland we get some detailed information from the Portuguese historian and explorer of the sixteenth century, Galvano. It is interesting to read that the great navigator visited the exact spot where the newly-constructed canal starts from the Caribbean coast. From the Rio Grande, we read, Columbus 'went to the River of Crocodiles which is now called Rio de Chagres, which has its springs near the South Sea, within four leagues of Panama, and runneth into the North Sea.' It was this same river, as we shall see, that became the feeder of the canal when the high-level scheme was adopted. So far out of his reckoning was Columbus that at Panama he imagined himself to be ten days' journey from the mouth of the Ganges ! One of his objects, as we know from his own journal, was to convert the Great Khan of Tartary to the Christian faith, and this entanglement in what he called 'the islands of the Indian Sea' was a sore hindrance to that and all his other purposes. He began that search for the strait which engaged the attention and tried the temper of Spanish, Portuguese, and English navigators for the next thirty years. He had heard from the natives of the coast of " a narrow place between two seas." They probably meant a narrow strip of land as at Panama. But Columbus understood them to mean a narrow waterway, and rumours of such a passage no doubt existed then, as they still do among the isthmian tribes. He must also have heard accounts of the great ocean only thirty miles away, and it is rather surprising he should not have made a dash across and anticipated Balboa and Drake. In May 1503, however, he quitted the 'Terra Firma' without solving the great secret, and he never returned to the mainland. He died in 1506, still in complete ignorance of the nature of his discovery. He knew nothing of the continent of America or of that seventy million square miles of ocean beyond, to which Magellan gave the name of 'Pacific.' The Holy Grail itself was not pursued with more persistence and devotion than this mythical, elusive strait by the navigators of the early years of the sixteenth century. The isthmian governor sent out from Spain went with urgent instructions to solve the 'secret of the strait.' In 1513 Balboa set himself to the great enterprise. If he could not discover a waterway he would at least see what lay beyond the narrow land barrier. From Coibo on the Gulf of Darien he struck inland on September 6 with a hundred Indian guides and bearers. It is eloquent of the difficulties of the country which he had to traverse that it was not until September 26 that he won, first of European men, his distant view of the nameless and mysterious ocean. It was he, and not Cortez, who 'with eagle eyes, stared at the Pacific.' 'And all his men looked at each other with a wild surmise, silent upon a peak in Darien.' Cortez was himself a persistent searcher for the mythical strait. He wrote home to the King of Spain saying, 'If the strait is found, I shall hold it to be the greatest service I have yet rendered. It would make the King of Spain master of so many lands that he might call himself the lord of the whole world.' These vain attempts had very important results. They led incidentally to the exploration of the whole coastline of the American continent. For example, Jacques Cartier, who was sent out by the King of France about this time to find 'the shorter route to Cathay,' searched the coast northwards as far as Labrador and thus prepared the way for the planting of a French colony in Canada. At last, in 1520, a sea-passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific was actually discovered by the first great circumnavigator, Magellan, but it was far away from the narrow lands between North and South America. Through the perilous straits that have ever since borne his name at the southern extremity of the continent, Magellan pushed his venturous way into the great ocean beyond. But even Magellan had no idea that a few miles south of his strait the land ended and Atlantic and Pacific mingled their waters in one great flood. That truth was accidentally discovered by the English Drake more than fifty years afterwards (1579). Drake had been driven southward by stormy weather when he made the discovery which almost eclipsed in its importance even Magellan's exploit. In his exultation, we are told, he landed on the farthest island, and walking alone with his instruments to its extremity threw himself down, and with his arms embraced the southernmost point of the known world. From that point Drake sailed up the western coast of South America, engaged mainly in his favourite pursuit of " singeing the King of Spam's beard" capturing, that is, the treasure-ships bound to Panama. But he did not forget the more scientific duty of searching for the strait. Far northward he held his course, past the future California, till he must have been off the coastline of what is now British Columbia, ever hoping to find the Pacific outlet of the famous North-West Passage. But always the coast trended to the north-west, and Drake, giving up the quest, turned his prow westward and continued his voyage of circumnavigation. But we are over-running our dates and must return to events at the isthmus. It was about the year 1530 that the non-existence of a natural waterway became recognized. And no sooner was this fact accepted than projects for an artificial canal began to be put forward. It was clear to the geographers and traders of those days that an isthmian route westward offered great advantages to the routes via the Cape of Good Hope, Magellan Straits, or the problematical North-West Passage." |
| We are most grateful for the support, including comments such as the following, which we have been receiving from our valued customers and club members as well as from the steamship lines and media over the years: |
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MARIS of Westport, CT Freighter Travel Club Int'l (Since 1958) Freighter & Specialty Cruises (Since 1993) 1 800 99-Maris (-62747) & 1 203 222-1500 (-9191 fax) www.freightercruises.com
New York-Montreal time, Monday through Friday
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