The vessel "Marina Svetaeva" will be re-flagged and renamed
"Ortellius". As Plancius, Ortelius was a Dutch / Flemish cartographer. Abraham Ortelius (1527 – 1598) published the first modern world atlas, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum or Theatre of the World in 1570.

The ice-strengthened vessel “Ortelius” is an excellent vessel for Polar expedition cruises in the Arctic and Antarctica, providing possibilities to adventure remote locations such as the Ross Sea and Franz Josef Land. “Ortelius” was built in Gdynia, Poland in 1989, was named “Marina Svetaeva”, and served as a special purpose vessel for the Russian Academy of Science. The vessel has the highest Russian ice-class notation (UL1 equivalent to 1A) and is therefore very suitable to navigate in solid one-year sea ice and loose multi-year pack ice.

”Ortelius” offers a comfortable hotel standard, with two restaurants, a bar/lecture room and a sauna. She can accommodate 100 passengers, has plenty of open-deck spaces and a large accessible bridge. A considerable number of quadruple and twin cabins with shared facilities (toilet and showers to be shared in the corridors) offer attractive lower starting prices for our Polar voyages.