The Sister The Clipper Adventurer is a former Russian passenger ship, the Alla Tarasova,  built to work in the North Baltic and Arctic Oceans. She's one of eight ships built in that class in the Polish shipyards famous for the Solidarity strikes in the late 60s and 70s. Originally built to accommodate 220 passengers, with a much smaller crew. They're powered by engines designed in Denmark, and built by Rolls Royce in England. The Tarasova and her sister ship, the Lyubov Orlova have been working Arctic and Antarctic cruises for the past 8 years. While not ice breakers, they have reinforced hulls that allow them to work in icy waters. The Clipper has her own sewer treatment plant, and also makes 50,000 gals. of fresh water daily from the seawater.

My first day in St. John's I saw what I thought was the Clipper Adventurer, and discovered the Orlova, tied up and abandoned at the wharf in St. John's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Lyubov_Orlova  Both of them are interesting stories. The original ships were named after famous Soviet movie stars of the '20s. The Orlova has taken passengers around Newfoundland, Ireland and to the Arctic with Adventure Canada. With today's markets, it doesn't take much for these ships to go under.

The Clipper is presently owned by a Swedish shipping company and is contracted out to Adventure Canada. Her officers are Swedish and Scottish, with the crew being mostly Philippine.

The Adventure Canada staff was mixed, it's a small family-owned company, running a summer camp for adults. Besides Matthew Swan Sr., the cruise director, and his son Matthew Jr., the expedition leader, there were musicians: Tony Oxford (also the mayor of Cox's Cove where we visit later) and Daniel Payne, Michael Crummy, a Newfoundland author (Kathy has read one of his books, I'm starting), a geologist, a marine biologist, a naturalist, a poet/botanist, a photographer, an anthropologist who just received her PhD and an Air Canada pilot who was also a writer. All of them doubled as Zodiac pilots. So we got as much information about the areas as we wanted.

http://www.adventurecanada.com/trip/newfoundland-circumnavigation-2012/

The food was amazing, we were well fed both onboard and ashore. Being a small ship, we were able to get into places that the larger cruise ships couldn't navigate. We went ashore three ways, if we were lucky and the ferry wasn't docking, we tied up to a wharf. But most of our landings were in Zodiacs, 10 passengers at a time. A dry landing was onto a dock, a wet landing was over the side, timing the waves as you walked up onto the beach.

As we left Francois, Nfld., the crew was changing the name of the Clipper, to her new name, Sea Adventurer. She'd been sold to another company, but the former owners kept the rights to the Clipper moniker. Right now her Philippine crew is on the way home for the first time in five months, our server in the dining room and the wine steward hadn't seen their children in that time. The ship is heading to Montevideo, Chile repositioning for 3 months of Antarctic cruises. The crew joins them after having three weeks off.

Tucked In

Photos:

2. The Clipper at anchor in Francois
3. The Lyubov Orlova anchor in St. John's harbour, she was sold for scrap shortly after our trip.