St Petersburg, the Baltic Sea July 2019

Robichaud

Truly looking forward to this amazing trip on the new Ponant ship, Dumont D’Urville.
Does anyone know when this ship will be launched?

AlanS

Robichaud wrote:

Truly looking forward to this amazing trip on the new Ponant ship, Dumont D’Urville.
Does anyone know when this ship will be launched?

I couldn't find a formal "launch" or christening date, but quite a few nautical miles of blue water have already passed under the keel of Dumont D’Urville: "The shipbuilder VARD constructed the vessel (hull and superstructure) at it's shipyard on the Danube in Tulcea, Romania. Then it was towed to the VARD Soviknes shipyard in Alesund Norway for outfitting." She was towed from the shipyard to the Black Sea-Mediterranean-Atlantic-North Sea to Norway. After outfitting, she will need to undergo sea trials, crew training, etc., but should be ready for her first scheduled voyage.

Sealord

I watched our ship Le Champlain in Norway for some time, and then it sailed around Norway for several weeks befoe it went to it’s inaugural cruise. Interesting, I think I saw a first cruise around 7 August 2019, and ‘Robichaud’ is posting about July 2019. Is it possible that the inaugural is a Tauck charter? On the other hand, our trip to the Panama canal never showed up on the Ponant website, but my green book says there will only be 90 Tauck guests, and the ship holds 180. So there will be other guests. Double charter or shared charter? In any case, the Ponant website does not show a July Baltic cruise, but Tauck has four trips in June/July before Ponant’s August trip.

British

Sealord, unless our green booklet has come in the last week——we are currently on a Tauck tour—- then your book has arrived before ours and yet our tour leaves before yours. I will be intrigued to see if the number on the tour is quoted.

Sealord

British wrote:

Sealord, unless our green booklet has come in the last week——we are currently on a Tauck tour—- then your book has arrived before ours and yet our tour leaves before yours. I will be intrigued to see if the number on the tour is quoted.

If you use a travel agent, they may have sent it there. But of course you know that. The book came on Tuesday. It says there ‘will be no more than 90’ Tauck guests, and there will be other non-Tauck guests some of whom will likely speak only French, but others who will be bilingual, and we are encouraged to ‘mingle’.
Our trip did not show up on Ponant’s “US” website. It just occured to me that they may only market some of their cruise products to their French clientele. That may explain why a number of Tauck Ponant cruises do not appear on the Ponant US website.

British

Always deal directly with Tauck. We get a daily email from US mail telling us what will be in the mail that day. Not seen it appear yet although not every piece of mail is shown

Sealord

Yes ... we normally deal directly with Tauck. We used my TA once, but there was no adventage, and a few disadvantages.

sevenseas

We will be on the Northbound tour starting July 7th. Is anyone on here part of that tour? It is, I believe, the first Northbound sailing of the Dumont D’Urville which left the yard a week or two ago and looks to be doing sea testing right now based on marine tracking sites.

Sealord

By the way, in the post above the book was wrong. We were a full boat charter with 150 guests even though the ship can hold 180.