Sea Cloud Cruises has confirmed that Infanta Elena of Spain, the sister of the country’s King Felipe VI, will christen the company’s new five-star yacht, Sea Cloud Spirit.
Sea Cloud Spirit is the modern interpretation of the Sea Cloud ship, the flagship of Sea Cloud Cruises. Like the 90-year-old original, and the Sea Cloud II built in 2001, the new windjammer has the character of a private yacht. The maiden voyage of the 136 passenger yacht begins from Rome on 14 September 2021.
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The third five-star vessel in the Sea Cloud Cruises fleet was built at the Metalships & Docks shipyard in the northern Spanish Port city of Vigo.
Immediately after the first contact with Sea Cloud Cruises, and aware of what the construction of the Sea Cloud Spirit meant for Spanish shipping and its uniqueness, Doña Elena agreed to christen the new tall ship.
After an extraordinary pilgrimage, the champagne bottles consecrated in Santiago de Compostela have arrived for the christening on board the Sea Cloud Spirit. The champagne has been blessed after a pilgrimage of almost 120 kilometres in Santiago de Compostela. The Spanish shipping lawyer and legal representative of Sea Cloud Cruises, Javier Arias-Camisón, kept a promise he made at the beginning of the ship’s construction. After the successful completion of the tall ship, he personally brought the champagne for the christening on foot to Santiago de Compostela and had it blessed there.
With two champagne bottles in his backpack, Arias-Camisón carried twice the luggage of a normal pilgrim on his back during the five-day pilgrimage. On his tour, at each pilgrimage stop along the way, the bottles received the obligatory stamp for devout walkers, on the specially made label of the champagne bottles. One of the two bottles will be traditionally shattered on the hull of Sea Cloud Spirit during the christening on 3 September 2021. The other bottle will be auctioned off for charity on the maiden voyage, scheduled for 14-24 September 2021.
After a 17-month coronarvius pause, Sea Cloud I returned to service on 7 August 2021, while Sea Cloud II will resume operation on 30 August 2021.