Many thanks to Havila Kystruten for providing the photographs for this article, visit www.havilavoyages.com
Per Saevik, founder and chairman of the Havila Group, was born in a family of fishermen. He started his career at sea in the fishing industry and soon bought his own fishing boat. His company Havila Group now employs thousands of people. The Havila Group – Havila orginates from the bible and is a land near the garden of Eden “rich in gold, and this gold is good”- has its headquarters in the small coastal village of Fosnavag, which has always been the homeport of the company.
Norway’s coastal shipping services have always been called “The world’s most beautiful voyage”, for Havila Norway’s nature and environment are vitally important, so the company strives to leave a minimal environmental footprint behind, operating a fleet of earth friendly ships.
Havila Kystruten has secured 4 of the 12 sailings of the daily coastal shipping service which was up till now run by the Hurtigruten ships since 1893. Their first ship Havila Capella started service on Decmber 12, 2021. She was to be followed by Havila Castor in April 2022, but at the time of writing (April 2022) she still has to finish trials because of problems with an electric motor which will cause a delay at least until May.
Two more sister ships Havila Polaris and Havila Pollux will be following in the third and fourth quarter of 2022. All of them will be built by the Turkish Shipyard Tersan, which previously specialized in smaller ships like fishing vessels and crab catchers, all of them technically highly advanced. With these four vessels built for Havila Kystruten, the yard is diversifying into the ferry-cruise market. Originally, two of the ships would be built by the Barreras yard in Spain, but when Barreras got into financial difficulties it was decided that Tersan would now build all units of the quartet instead of two, so the two half finished vessels were towed to Turkey for completion.
Havila’s ships are among the most environmentally friendly vessels afloat. The world’s largest battery packs are installed, weighing 2 times 43 tons, with a capacity of 6,100 KWh comparable to 600 model S Tesla cars. Zero-emissions are the company’s ultimate goal. This is now achieved for periods of 4 hours as the ship’s battery packs allow them to sail powered solely by electricity for this duration. Also, LNG combined with battery packs enable these hybrid ships to cut CO2 emissions by 25% and NOx emissions by 80 – 95%. Finally, energy efficiently designed hulls ensure the lowest fuel consumption possible. They normally sail at at a speed of 16 to 18 knots.
The Havila Kystruten ships carry a total of 640 pax, 468 are accommodated in 179 cabins. The rest of them are day-passengers (there are 172 seats available for them), as like the Hurtitgruten ships, ships in Norwegian coastal services also are a means of providing transportation of passengers and freight, they are true working passenger vessels. They measure 15,776 tons, length overall is 124 meters and their beam is 22 meters. Havila’s ships have been designed follwing the Norwegian concept of “hygge”, meaning being is fully relaxed in cozy surroundings with friends. To achieve this the interior design relates to Norway’s nature by using materials reflecting the sea, sky, rocky mountains and glaciers. Public areas have panoramic windows to offer the best views of Norway’s breathtaking scenery.
Deck 9 , the vessels’ top deck houses the Panorama Bar & Lounge. One deck down, on Deck 8, an outdoor promenade, saeting area and jacuzzi’s are found. Decks 4, 5 and 6 are reserved for cabins. Deck 7 features most of the public spaces, the main dining room specialising in Norwegian dishes prepared using local ingredients situated aft, a café and a la carte restaurant midships and forward a shop selling local specialties, books and clothes followed by a conference hall with seating area’s, with the Bow Lounge on either side of it . All the way forward on this deck is the bow viewpoint offering sensational views of the passing scenery. Piercing through all decks is the 6-deck atrium which has the guest service reception at its lowest level on deck 4.
Accommodations available:
- Interior cabins, 2 guests, (10 sqm) and Interior plus cabins (16 – 18 sqm) for up to 4 guests,
- Exterior cabins with seaview (15 sqm) with beds that can be used as sofa during daytime or the more spacious ones measuring up to 20 sqm with a permanent sofa and writing desk added,
- Suites: seaview with large window, panoramic seaview with floor-to-celing windows and balcony suites. Top of the range is the presidential suite.
- Although Havila started operations with their first vessel Havila Capella from December 12, 2021, since April 2022 she has temporarily been taken out of service. Hurtigruten will step in taking over guests on their ships, space permitting. Reason for this is that Havila owns and operates the ship(s), but they have been financed by GLTK, an investment firm backed by Russian capital. Because of the worldwide sanctions against the state of Russia after their invasion of the Ukraine which are fully supported by Havila, new investors need to be found and the Havila Kystruten division has put operations on hold for the time being until this problem has been solved.
- Every day, a ship leaves Bergen for the coastal route along Norway’s coast, throught the Lofoten area and around Europe’s most Northern point, the North Cape and then to Kirkenes at the Russian border. In the future, probably the end of 2022 if all goes according to plan, 4 of these sailing will be operated by Havila Kystruten with Havila Capella, Havila Castor, Havila Polaris and Havila Pollux at least until 2030 (ten year contract 2020 – 2030).
It will be possible to book parts of this12 day, 34 ports voyage. Sailing the north- or northbound route in 6 or 7 days, from Bergen tot Kirkenes of vice versa.
Or the North Cape (Tromso – Kirkenes), Lofoten (Trondheim – Tromso) or Fjords (Bergen – Trondheim) legs of the journeys taking just 2 or 3 days.
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