Titan

06.10.2006-05.04.2007

Chief officer

m/y Titan 

Titan in La Seyne-sur-Mer

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 officer. Considering the offer and what the NSB was paying me I readily agreed to join and I subsequently sent my resignation to Germany which they regretted as they said in their reply they'd consider me as Chief mate on the following tour. Well, unfortunately it was not to be.

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 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. This was well ahead of times when all other yachts went with the standard 12 guests max to keep within regulations.

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 surviving wife.

When I joined the summer season was just finished and a bit later we sailed for the winter maintenance 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 by Sud Moteur. They actually cut a hole in the side to manage to get out the old shaft and put in the new shaft. As we were not faired it was easy to paint over the weldings afterwards.

Deckhand Sasha and Bosun Victor

Footnote 2020: Eventually we fixed her up for the next summer and several charters lined up but the Owner had decided to sell her and move on with their life. We completed one charter successfully cruising at the south of France and after that we got the sad news of the sale having been signed. 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.

Following anecdote was kind of funny, the Italian Captain and Officers came onboard in Monaco to see how the yacht works and off we sailed. It wasn't many hours and we arrived Molo Vecchio in Genoa and we prepared for arrival, stern to mooring. Lines were laid out and anchors prepared, approach went well and we were going astern to our berth. Anchor was let go and ground lines were attached in the bow, in the stern was our only old deckhand making fast with the Italian mate. 

Captain Christos

I was in the bow and having made all sort of fast I went to the bridge to see Capt Christos and the Italian Capt, I watched from the CCTV where the deckhand was struggling to get the stern heaved to the seawall properly for the passarelle to reach. The mate was standing with his uniform on holding a walkie-talkie watching how the deckhand was trying to handle a job with two hands that would require 4 hands. 

I asked Capt if he'd allow me to go aft and give a hand and he acquiesced. I went astern and together we heaved the stern in place and rigged the passarelle in few minutes and that was us done. Later Captain told me he had seen us pulling ropes on the CCTV and the Italian mate was still standing in one corner with his shiny uniform and walkie-talkie looking at us and he had told the Italian Captain pointing at the CCTV screen, "look at that, there is my chief officer pulling lines and there is yours standing in the corner". I guess it was a compliment to me. I heard the whole team was changed at a later date.

Years passed by and from time to time I visited Genoa airport marina on other yachts. I 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. 

2024 update: still listed as Aqua Blu for charter in Indonesia. It appears guest capacity and crew complement has been increased to 30 persons each, so an additional 16 persons more from the old max. Still nice to see the old lady is going strong (fingers crossed).