Renaissance Cruiseships Reflagged To Marshall Islands

Six of the former Renaissance cruiseships now owned by Cruiseinvest LLC, a Marshall Islands-incorporated company, have been reflagged to the Marshall Islands, Cruiseinvest, and International Registries Inc, the managers of the Marshall Islands maritime and corporate registers, said in a joint announcement on December 5.

"We required a register and flag administration known for its integrity to match the quality of our superb new cruiseships and to give us business flexibility, and the Marshall Islands fulfilled these needs," said Dominique Prunier, chief executive of Cruiseinvest Management S.A., a Marshall Islands company which manages the Cruiseinvest fleet and which has an office in Paris to oversee the management of the fleet. He said that Cruiseinvest had appointed American Marine Advisors , the New York-based merchant bank, as the ships' commercial manager, and the Monte-Carlo based Martinoli SAM as the fleet's technical manager.

"It is very encouraging that these state-of-the-art luxury cruiseships have been flagged in the Marshall Islands as we are investing and innovating to further enhance the quality and safety of the register", said Clay Maitland, managing partner of IRI. He said the registration arrangements for five of the vessels - R One, R Two, R Five, R-Six and R Seven - were completed in London. R Eight was registered in Paris on November 26. Maitland said IRI conducts its own quarterly safety inspections aboard passenger ships using its global network of nautical inspectors, soon to be supplemented by a team of travelling inspectors from IRI offices. Each of the six cruiseships accommodate about 700 passengers in 350 four star plus cabins, and is of 30,277 GT. R Eight was built in 2001. R Seven, R Six and R 5 were built in 2000, and R One and R Two were built in 1998 - all at the Chantiers de l'Atlantique yard at St. Nazaire, France. All are classed by Bureau Veritas.