From Fjords to Freo

The Norwegian Spirit is here with Freo going full Scandi for a day!

This morning at 6 am, Norwegian Spirit cruise ship drew into Fremantle Harbour – her first-ever visit. Her dynamic hull art, turquoise and blue wave-like patterns, skimmed over the water.

Norwegian Spirit is a classic, mid-sized cruise ship in the Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) fleet and known for her $100 million-dollar refit in 2020. Almost every space was updated making her feel contemporary despite a 1998 launch.

There are stylish new lounges, refreshed staterooms, sophisticated dining venues, and upgraded public areas. Passengers can now enjoy enhanced amenities, and a range of modern comforts that rival some of the newest ships afloat.

Her hull art was also renewed to a more restrained and subtle design – long gone is the old pre-NCL cartoonish mermaid chasing dolphins.

Some old artwork!

She is a Leo-class cruise ship and was originally built in 1998 for Malaysian based Star Cruises as SuperStar Leo. In 2004 she was transferred to NCL and renamed Norwegian Spirit. NCL is a US based line (Miami Florida) – so only Norwegian in spirit!

Bahamas-flagged and registered in Nassau, she can carry up to 2,000 passengers.

You will be interested to learn that here in Freo –

There are 1767 transit passengers
4 are disembarking into Fremantle
12 new passengers will be embarking from Fremantle
There are 884 crew
318 passengers are on pre-booked tours, leaving 1,449 passengers free to explore Fremantle for the day.
The City of Fremantle will run free shuttle buses from the Fremantle Passenger Terminal into Walyalup Koort from 08:00 – 17:00 to assist in bringing passengers into the city centre and returning them to the ship.

And here she is tied up at the famous Fremantle Passenger Terminal this morning, almost in the heart of Freo, along with bikes, buses and cars!

Here’s a gallery of the ship’s arrival at 6.

Like many cruise ships flagged out of North America, her itinerary program is based on Alaskan voyages, 7-day roundtrips from homeport Seattle, Washington State, USA.

She also homeports in Sydney and Auckland.

In June 2023 NCL cancelled the ship’s Alaska 2024 and Australia 2024-25 winter programs and replaced them with Asian seasonal cruises from China.

The Norwegian Spirit is currently undertaking a 19-day, one-way cruise from Singapore to Sydney and is just in Freo for the day.

You can practice saying hello in Norwegian in case you meet any visiting Norwegian passengers – it’s “hei hei” pronounced “hi hi”, yes they say it twice! But, as you can guess, despite the NLC name and the ship’s name, there are probably very few Norwegian guests on board this ship! So a simple ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ will likely work well!

Her last port of call was Benoa, Bali. After her transit day in Fremantle, the ship is heading to Busselton, leaving port tonight at 9pm.

*Story and photographs (except where indicated otherwise) by Jean Hudson @jeansodyssey

Jean Hudson is our Shipping and Sailing Correspondent and also a regular feature writer, reviewer and photographer here on the Shipping News. You may also like to follow up her informative Places I Love stories, as well as other feature stories and Freo Today photographs, right here.

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