A ship delivery in three phases spanning 22 months, including an lengthening of 15 meters.
On Tuesday 13th September 2022, nearly 2 years before her arrival at her new home port Papeete, the Vaitere 2 was acquired by her present owners TMV. TMV is a family-owned company and bought the ship, formerly known as “With Nord”, for operations in the interisland trade. But not before a major conversion had to be completed. The initial voyage was from Trondheim to Le Havre. The vessel was laid up for the engineering and tendering phase for extending the vessel from 49,99 to 64,99 meters. Included in the extension were the passenger accommodations to make the vessel tailor fit for her interisland trade in Polynesia.
The second stage was from Le Havre to Gdansk for the actual conversion and lengthening at Remontowa Shipyard. You will find a fine impression of this conversion with the movie published on the website of Alwena Shipping, overseeing the entire project. The movie was made by Remontowa Shipyard, also a repeat customer of Redwise with the delivery of the Dual Fuel Salish class ferries from Poland to Vancouver as well as the “Coastal” class for conversions to LNG. The third and final stage was the voyage from Gdansk to Papeete, together with the owners’ crew and loaded with cargo. During this passage both Redwise and the owners’ crew integrated to make it a success. The voyage went, as one would want, quite uneventful bringing a process of in total more than two years to a conclusion.
The Vaitere 2 is a vessel of which the owners are rightfully immensely proud. She will service the Islands in the South Pacific, supplying daily needs and transporting passengers and locally produced products. Having been very well-built in Norway in 2001 and taken well care of by her previous owners, the Vaitere 2 is once again a good demonstration that a well-built vessel has a long lifespan. It is also the most sustainable solution by reusing what is good and reliable and not creating the carbon emissions of new steel and building, quite often a very large proportion of total (indirect) emissions. Moreover, an added benefit is using proven technology in places where direct service on electronic parts is not always available, reducing the risk of downtime substantially.
Redwise is equally proud to have been granted the trust of owners TMV and Alwena Shipping. The participation in this successful project is one of many ship delivery voyages carried out annually with Redwise own crews and under Redwise management and building relationships with the family companies behind it.
