Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Sign on m/y Titan

After having left CMA CGM Capella after completing my tour I was at home in Thailand. In a few days I was contacted by Captain Christos Ntaoutis asking if I would like to join m/y Titan as Chief Mate. 

Considering the offer and what the NSB was paying me I readily agreed to join and I subsequently sent my resignation to Germany.

I got a flight from Bangkok to Nice and soon enough I was off and after the long haul I arrived France 6th October. I was met by the Bosun in the crew car and whisked onboard to Monaco. Incidentally Bosun was also a Finnish chap.

Titan in La Seyne-sur-Mer

Titan was originally a British naval hydrographic vessel built by Brooke Marine in Lowestoft back in 1968 so she was as old as I was. The current crew complement was 20 and she was commercially registered as a small passenger vessel with a guest capacity of 24. 

As time went by I learned that she was almost single-handedly converted from navy vessel into a superyacht by the owning Captain, Mr Peter Bull. He designed the vessel with his wife and carried out all the DAD's with Lloyd's class into Cayman Island flag. Unfortunately he passed on from illness shortly after completion of the vessel so ownership had passed onto his family.

When I joined the summer season was just finished and a bit later we sailed for the winter season to La Seyne-sur-Mer, a small hamlet basically conjoined with Toulon for works. One of the main engines had a broken camshaft and would be later replaced after our drydocking in Marseille.

Footnote 2020: Eventually we fixed her up for the next summer and several charters lined up but the Owners had decided to sell her and move on with their life. The buyers were from Italy and senior crew including me were asked if we'd like to bring the vessel to Genoa and hand over to the new Italian officers and Indonesian ratings. As it meant a bit more money in the pocket for me I agreed although it was sad that the boat had sold and I would soon be on the street looking for a job.

Years passed by and from time to time I visited Genoa and could see her sitting there and once I collaborated with her on a common charter. Very little exterior changes had been made to her except renewal of her deck crane and change of hull color. 

In 2019 I came over the news that she had been sold and renamed Aqua Blu with new cruising grounds in Indonesia. Her Class had been changed to RINA (probably already back in 2006) and flag had been changed from Italian to Panamanian.