The Ship
Ship:
RCGS RESOLUTE Flag: Madeira (Portugal)
IMO: 9000168
MMSI: 255806208
Call sign: CQAL6
(Charlie Quebec Alpha Lima Six)Year Build: 1991
Tonnage: 8,378 GT
Ice Class: Lloyds 1A(Super)
Hull Classification: Ice Strengthened
Length: 122.83 m (403 ft 0 in)
Beam: 18.00 m (59 ft 1 in)
Draft: 4.9 m (16 ft 1 in)
Speed: 16 kn (29.63 km/h)
The vessel for the expedition was the
“RCGS RESOLUTE” from One Ocean Expeditions. The ship was built in 1991 and was owned & operated by a few companies & was taken over by OOE after the Summer 2018 season and sailed from Hamburg (it’s former home port) to Sydney, Nova Scotia where it was
renamed “RCGS RESOLUTE” (and while it was docked in Sydney the Kosher food was loaded on - according to some sources
Montreal might have closer to the Ushuaia than - sorry I got confused already
).
The ship then sailed down to Punta Arenas, Chile where it left on its maiden voyage for OOE and we had the 3rd voyage (one of the reason I couldn’t find any reviews on the Ship)
I will bring here
@Dan description of the ship's layout and I will add in my notes;
Deck 1: has the engine room, which is off-limits to passengers.Deck 2: has the presentation room that we used as our shul. The ship set it up with a mechitza that was perfect for our needs. It also houses the ship’s infirmary. - Between the presentation room & the hospital is some of the crew quarters. Officially no passage between each other and you have to go up to deck 3 to go from forward to aft
Deck 3: houses the triple cabins, as well as the mud rooms and zodiac boat exits from where we would change into boots and leave on Antarctic expeditions. - most of the triple cabins are not sold but rather houses the “Staff”. Behind the mud rooms are some areas off limits to passengers including storage & crew quarters.
Deck 4: has the twin cabins, the ship’s boutique shop, and the main dining room. - in the forward section in the bow I believe are the anchor & some other technical stuff
Deck 5: has the superior and superior plus cabins, as well as the lounge, bar, and an aft observation deck. - the superior plus cabins are the most forward cabins, with the bridge being on the deck above and the anchor below. The superior plus cabins can hear & feel every time the bow thrusters are used and as well any anchor movement. The noise was deafening most of the cruise.
Deck 6: has the suites, the Bistro with its indoor and heated outdoor seating, the ship’s bridge, and an aft observation deck.Deck 7: has the pool, hot tub, exercise room, and the library with expansive views forward. - going to the aft are the lifeboats, 1 fast rescue boat on each side, and at the very aft the Zodiacs are stored (they are lowered by crane to the water)
Deck 8: is the main forward observation deck. - You can take a Virtual Tour of the ship
here & more details about the ship can be found here on OOE’s
download page
The ship has 2 elevators, one by the center by reception/lobby and one forward by the staterooms/bridge area. Next to the elevators are nice open wide staircases and most people just used the stairs and didn’t bother with the elevators. During the Shake on עשרה בטבת the elevators were taken out of service. The elevators also didn’t go down to Deck 2 to the presentation room.
I really liked the cabin layout. Upon entering the cabin was a tiny closet with 2 hooks, 2 small shelves like for gloves/hats, 2 umbrellas.
The bathroom had storage place both in vanity & wall cabinets. The shower has 2 bars to hold on, & water pressure was good. Shampoo & soap was provided in a wall dispenser.
Right outside the bathroom was the emergency closet, containing 2 life-vests and a survival kit. Continuing to the bedroom on the wall hanging was 2 sets of the included gear such as the bib pants, waterproof jacket, waterproof bag & binoculars.
Under the bed was place to store luggage (I sent some of my suitcases to the storage room for the duration of the trip). 3 closets of hanging & shelf space, and a night chest next to each bed. By the window was a couch which had drawers underneath for more storage and a table bolted to the floor. All drawers & cabinets had euro hinges & rubbers which kept the door tight closed even if the ship was shaking.
The was a screen in each room and showed the daily schedule and the map, and I believe you were able to watch a DVD but I didn't try (it had some other input as well).
Their was a small fridge and a drawer with cups, same idea designed to keep everything secured, a coffee machine was there as well. The window sill had plenty space for storage.
There was a house-keeping service all day long, and each cabin was cleaned twice a day - morning & during dinner.
The ship has 3 divisions of crew;
1) “Staff” or “Blue Shirts” - those were OOE’s Expedition leaders, guides, adventurers, photographer, naturalists, penguinologist and many other "-ists" (ואי אפשר לפורטם כי רבים הם), those are people from 1st world countries (like from Canada & the US) receiving 1st World salaries with 1st World benefits. During meal times they sat & mingled between the passengers, at night hung out with everyone. Most of the staff left with us out of Ushuaia - they do a "tour of duty" for 2-3 weeks at a time.
2) “Crew” - those from 2nd world countries getting paid 2nd world salaries, doing all the other jobs like; ship engineering, kitchen & galley, cleaning, painting (the ship gets painted over & over 24/7), all “sailor” stuff (anchor / security / engine / gangway / zodiacs loading), Doctor (Ukrainian), incinerator, hotel staff (room service etc), waiters and so on. Most of them are Thai/Filipino (I don’t know the difference between). They live fully on the ship for months.
3) The bridge crew - higher ranking sailors, such as the Captain(s), navigator, Staff captain and a few more. They were mainly from Ukraine, but there was one British officer as well, and for the lookout position they had one of the “crew” have that job.
When we came on board & checked-in (more on that later) I asked for our room key, and was told the ship has an “open door” policy - as weird as it sounds, all doors on the boat were kept unlocked at all times (except of course when I was sleeping…), and this included every room from the bridge to the tech rooms to the kitchen & galley to the rooms to Stephen Harper's Suite, and everyone just applied common sense and didn’t go where they didn’t belong. There was a sign posted by the 3rd deck bulkhead that “Security Level 1” was in effect which is the minimum. By one of the mud rooms was a metal detector but it was never used (I believe that on the big cruise ships one goes thru airport style screening every time they board), the only security measure that was done (or called it safety) was every time you went off or returned you had to scan your card in & out (and if you didn’t have your card just saying your cabin number & name worked - your face was matched with the picture on file)
During the planning of this cruise OOE had said that the only communications options was phone card (to use the ship’s public satellite phone, which was in the phone booth next to the reception - $30 for a 60 minute card) or an email service to send text emails only for a setup fee of $30. While the was a big מחלוקת הפוסקים regarding using an Inmarsat or Iridium sat phone, I came upon this
https://twitter.com/georgekourounis/status/1063511219913482242 & I shared it with group, and as his tweets kept on coming
@Dan asked
“what is he using for service?” one of us said maybe a
BGAN device, but then he replied to
@Dan https://twitter.com/georgekourounis/status/1065422163644157952 & we were all “oh no, we were looking forward to a
forced digital detox” (I already had in mind what I was going to send out on my WhatsApp status before & after the trip being off the grid and now I was back to the drawing board…), but other than “there is some Wifi service” we didn’t know any details, and we all started to ask OOE, I send DMs on Instagram to anyone that posted from the ship but no one replied back and it took a few weeks till we got the pricing. (Side note, @georgekourounis also used a
BGAN supplied by NatGeo.)
OOE kept on touting that the ship has an “open bridge” policy where the bridge is open and you can enter whenever you want except in minor cases - but in reality, the bridge was closed more times than not, it was open after lunch for a few hours (on non-excursion days) and then again after dinner till around 10pm. If the weather was bad (such as windy days or during the drake passage) or during “pilotage” the bridge was closed. Every time the bridge was open there had to be one or more from the “Blue Shirts” on hand to babysit us, to usher us to the starboard side, to only talk in whispers, and to behave really nicely. But all the officers were very nice & patient, and every person every time they came to the bridge they kept the officers very busy “what's this switch?” “that switch?” “what’s this” “that?” “what’s the weather forecast” “drake lake?” “shake?” and checking out every machine, checking the planned route in the autopilot, going to the weather computer to look at the forecast, all this rinse & repeat every person again every day. (I will write more about the bridge later in the TR)
Another tidbit was regarding tracking, while there is FlightRadar24 for flights - which is free with minimal ads or low monthly rates, the main ship tracking site is
MarineTraffic, but their website has more ads then VIN & LNN combined, making it really slow & very buggy. I started to look into their paid options, but you need a PHD in tech engineering to understand their plans (which BTW is only
yearly & not monthly), so I created an account with an email that I never use to try it out and then found out their trials are 3 days only with a CC on hold which meant that my plan of doing a monthly trial during the trip won’t work. I then found another site
VesselFinder & they have a more basic version just for passengers cruise ships called
CruiseMapper which loaded faster (their app does for some reason not update like the website) and did the trick for my family to track the ship.
