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KYDON (ΚΥΔΩΝ)

-ANEK Lines (2015-2017)

Built in 1990 (age 34). Was registered in Piraeus. Current line: None in Greece, sold to Ferries Del Caribe for service between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico

The ferry KYDON was built in Japan in 1990, for the Japanese company Higashi Nihon Ferry as the HERMES. She operated on the Naoetsu-Muroran-Iwanai line until she was sold to the Greek company ANEK Lines in 1998. She was converted in Perama and was initially renamed S. VENIZELOS, but she was instead renamed SOPHOCLES V in order to avoid confusion with the ANEK Lines flagship (at the time), the EL. VENIZELOS. She began service in 1999, on the Patras-Igoumenitsa-Corfu-Trieste line on the Adriatic Sea, along with the EL. VENIZELOS, and she was joined in 2000 by her sister ship, the LEFKA ORI (which had operated in Japan as the HERCULES). Both ships were then deployed on the Patras-Igoumenitsa-Corfu-Venice line from 2005 to 2011. There, both ships were very successful and much appreciated by passengers. However, in 2012, the Greek financial crisis pushed ANEK Lines to charter the two ships to South Korea, with a purchasing option. The ships were acquired by the South Korean company Jeju Cruise Line, which planned to rename the SOPHOCLES V to ELIZABETH L and the LEFKA ORI to ANTONIO L. She arrived in South Korea, but she and her sister ship never began service there, as the company collapsed due to debts owed to the shipyards that were supposed to convert them. After being abandoned in Busan for an entire year, the two ships finally returned to Perama. The SOPHOCLES V was then chartered to the Italian company Go In Sardinia (on the Livorno-Olbia-Arbatax-Civitavecchia line) and then to the Algerian company Algérie Ferries (on the Marseille-Oran line) during the summer of 2014. After the LEFKA ORI began a conversion in late 2014 in order to begin sailings for Blue Star Ferries as the BLUE GALAXY, the SOPHOCLES V underwent the same conversion in Perama during the spring of 2015. During that conversion she changed her registry from Chania to Piraeus (becoming the first ANEK Lines ship to ever do so) and she was renamed KYDON, after the first-ever ship of ANEK Lines. She returned to service for ANEK Lines during the summer of 2015 on the Piraeus-Chania line along with her sister ship, the BLUE GALAXY. In the winter of 2015 she was deployed on the Piraeus-Heraklion line, but she returned on the Piraeus-Chania line during the summer of 2016. However, her return to ANEK Lines was brief, as in 2017 she was sent on a long-term charter to the company Ferries Del Caribe, for service on the Santo Domingo-San Juan line, connecting the Dominican Republic with Puerto Rico via the Caribbean Sea. She was subsequently bought by the latter company in 2020.

PHOTOS (2016):

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