Summery of Great Lakes Cruising

Courtesy of Kevin Griffin in our London office.

Many already know that Hapag-Lloyd's 420-passenger Columbus will  not
be back in the Great Lakes in 2008, after she had to revise her 2007 cruise
itineraries because of low water levels at Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, port for
the Agawa Canyon rail excursion. It has planned a drydocking and will
charter  the ship to Martin Randall Travel of London in September-October, for
what  normally would have been her 2008 Great Lakes season. Although Columbus
was built to cruise the Great Lakes, when or whether she returns may depend
on the success of the Martin Randall programme, which was designed to attract
Swan Hellenic passengers before that brand was resuscitated. 

A serious (and quite ridiculous) problem also arose in 2007 when the US
Border Patrol (do I detect a move away from Homeland Security in the
nomenclature?) refused to let the ship call in Chicago as that port is not equipped with
the latest security equipment for fingerprinting and iris scanning. This was
eventually resolved by the ship running all her passengers through
immigration at the Ambassador Bridge border station on the way to Chicago but did not
take into account that the ship had been calling in Chicago regularly since
1997.

Cruise West has also withdrawn the 108-passenger Spirit of Nantucket,  which
will go to Alaska in 2008 as the new Spirit of Glacier Bay. And  Heritage
Cruise Lines dropped its short cruises out of Kingston in the little
18-passenger Georgian Clipper at the end of the 2007 season.  Although this  is a loss
of three ships to the Great Lakes in one season, plans are already in  place
to replace them.

For summer 2008, the Lakes will have just American Canadian Caribbean  Line
and St Lawrence Cruise Lines, but in the autumn Pearl Seas Cruises will  make
its maiden transit into the Great Lakes with the first of its two
214-passenger newbuildings from Irving Shipbuilding in Halifax, as yet unnamed. In 2009,
Pearl Seas will then run a full season of Great Lakes cruises. The 2008  debut
will include two cruises, one from Quebec to Toronto and one from Toronto  to
Quebec in October. Ports of call will include Quebec, Trois Rivieres,
Montreal, Clayton, Kingston and Toronto. The 2009 schedule will stretch from May
through October, with eight cruises including the Great Lakes, sailing in as far
as Chicago, while others will sail along the East Coast, Gulf of St
Lawrence and Newfoundland. PSC is the foreign-flag subsidiary of American Cruise
Line. The Toronto to Chicago cruises will include calls at Toronto, Windsor,
Midland, Parry Sound, Little Current, Mackinac Island, Holland and  Chicago.

Also in 2009, Travel Dynamics of New York will return to the Great Lakes
with a season of fourteen cruises by its 110-passenger Clelia II, which it has
now secured on a multi-year contract. Travel Dynamics was last in the
Great  Lakes with Orion in 2004 and before that had operated Le Lavant, both
now  sailing elsewhere. It first cruised from New England into Montreal with
Illiria in the 1980s. Clelia II's season will run from June through
September and she will cruise between Toronto and Duluth. Ports of call will
include Toronto, Port Weller (for Niagara Falls), Little Current, Mackinac
Island, Houghton (Michigan), Thunder Bay and Duluth.

Despite the loss of Columbus in 2008, the number of cruises offered in 2009
will still be up on 2007, as will the total berth capacity offered on the
Great  Lakes. Many people will recognize several of the new ports of call from the
old  Georgian Bay Line days with North American and South American.

Kevin Griffin in London