Viking Grace makes maiden voyage

Viking Line took delivery of the €240m vessel from the STX Finland Oy in Turku last week. It was launched in August last year after being ordered in December 2010.

The vessel is the subject of the ship description in the January issue of The Motorship and it’s also the planned venue for the Mercator Media organised Gas Fuelled Ships conference being held from 11 to 12 September 2013.

The conference will see a full house of architects, shipyards, designers, shipowners, ship managers, port authorities, LNG brokers, agents, classification societies and manufacturers coming together to discuss and exchange ideas on the use of LNG as a fuel for ships.

Viking Grace is powered by Wärtsilä dual fuel engines and will normally operate on LNG. STX says that this means emissions into the sea are totally eliminated and emissions into the air are significantly lower than those of other large passenger ships.

And the Viking Grace is not only environmentally friendly when it comes to the way it’s fuelled. The vessel has a hydrodynamically optimised hull shape and highly effective propulsion machinery that saves energy. Extensive development work has been devoted to the hull shape, which minimises swell waves. According to Viking Line, day-to-day operations on board the vessel will also be centred around recycling and resource optimisation.

The 218m long vessel will operate on the Turku (Finland) – Åland Islands – Stockholm (Sweden) route.