At Sea with Doug Newman

First, let me apologize for the lack of a blog yesterday. I try to blog at least every weekday that I’m not away (often there is not much to blog about on the weekends) but yesterday, for the first time, I skipped a day. I promise it will not happen too often.

As you know, a few days ago I posted, courtesy of John Heald’s personal assistant “007″, the rumor that Orient Lines’ Marco Polo had been sold to Greek interests who would charter her to German cruise line Transocean Tours.

Yesterday I had a nice comment from a very helpful gentleman in Germany, the managing director of an Internet cruise agency, saying that he had spoken to Transocean’s press office and that they were denying the rumor:

“Dear Doug

Transocean is officially denying any interest in a long-term charter of the vessel. I have just talked to a lady from Transocean’s press office.

Best regards from Germany
Niclas
managing director of kreuzfahrt.de Seereisen“

And so I thought the rumor was probably not true after all.

But now it seems to be back with a vengeance. Seatrade Insider today ran a story with the rather confident headline “Transocean to operate Marco Polo”. Well, that’s that I thought - it’s true after all!

In fact I’m not quite convinced. Despite the headline suggesting an official announcement, it turns out that:

“Seatrade Insider can disclose [that] according to well-placed sources Marco Polo is being purchased by Greek buyers who are chartering to Transocean.”

To me, “well-placed sources” makes this sound like yet another rumor. Admittedly it sounds like a rumor that Seatrade Insider - a news source of generally impeccable reliability - must be quite confident about; but nevertheless it is still a rumor as far as I am concerned.

So the mystery continues. In the meantime, I have sent off an e-mail to Transocean’s press department (in English - I really must learn German, though fortunately most German businesspersons do speak English) to see if they will confirm this rumor, deny it as Niclas reports they did, or neither. Unfortunately it is already late Friday night in Deutschland, well past business hours, so I do not expect a response until Monday at the earliest. I will certainly update as soon as I hear anything, from anyone.