Robin West, vice president and general manager of expeditions for Seabourn. (Photo Credit: Seabourn)
Robin West, vice president and general manager of
expeditions for Seabourn, spoke with TravelPulse aboard the 264-passenger
Seabourn Venture, the ultra-luxury line’s first expedition ship built to sail in polar regions. West’s
primary role is to oversee global expedition operations, most of which are included
on the new expedition ships and available as shore excursions on the line’s
traditional ocean-going fleet.
Our interview took place while we were sailing in Greenland,
a voyage that let us explore this fascinating land by foot, Zodiac tours,
kayaking and even underwater submersibles. A second expedition ship, Seabourn
Pursuit, is expected to enter service in September 2023.
TravelPulse: Describe what you do in a
nutshell.
Robin West: My job is to develop itineraries and manage
expedition operations to deliver the best possible guest experience wherever we
are in the world.
TP: Is this your dream job?
RW: One-hundred percent. This ship is my dream. I’ve been
in the expedition industry for 20 years and came to Seabourn in 2013. My dad
has always said to me that I’ve never worked a day in my life. He’s seen all
the photographs of places I’ve been and things I’ve done. If I had to do it
over again, I’d do the same thing.
TP: How do you plan where to go with the
expedition ships?
RW: I have a team that supports me in deployment. I work
with Jen Martin and Shaun Powell, and each of us have about 20 years of
expedition experience for various companies. We take the ships to the favorite
places we want to go and, based on where we’ve been and the experience in the
industry, we tend to have covered the world quite well. We also know what this ship
is capable of doing. When we built the ship, it needed to have autonomy to be
able operate remotely for extended periods of time with no outside input or
assistance. Beyond that, there’s obviously a much larger team that reviews the
itineraries from a provisioning perspective and nautical perspective, as well as safety and access.
Both Pursuit and Venture are PC6 hull rated; PC stands for polar
class. Basically, what that means is we’re not an ice breaker, but the ship is
capable comfortably operating in ice up to 1.2, 1.3 meters thick. We can’t move
through solid ice and create our own path like an ice breaker, but we can
handle and operate very comfortably in a lot of ice. We took this ship last
year up to 82 degrees north into the Arctic Circle in pack ice with no problem
at all.
(Photo Credit: Seabourn)
TP: What does this ship have that enables it to
explore the Arctic and Antarctic regions?
RW: The ship is polar code rated, so that means everything
on board is rated to a certain temperature; on this vessel it’s minus 10
degrees Celsius. It affects every technical aspect of the vessel to operate
safely in those temperatures. We designed and built the vessel with operating
in heavy ice in mind. It’s other little things. For example, on a typical ocean
vessel, the tender platform opens onto the ocean, but nothing on Venture opens
onto the water because if you’re in heavy pack ice, the ice has a chance of damaging
it. All the shell doors open up or inwards.
We also have Azipod propulsion, which is fantastic in heavy
ice conditions because you’ve got incredible control of the vessel, unlike
shaft propellers where you can’t move as fast or as flexibly.
We designed this vessel with four cranes, so we can deploy
two submarines, all the kayaking equipment, seven Zodiacs and two support
vessels in 25 minutes. The submarines have a dedicated support vessel that
accompanies them the entire time. We refer to them as a chase boat, and it’s in
constant communication with the submarine, so it knows every single second
where the submarine is. Each submarine, when it dives, has its own dedicated surface
support boat.
TP: Does this ship have a computer-controlled dynamic positioning system (DPS), which allows the ship to stay in place without anchoring?
RW: Yes, it gives us the choice to anchor or not. Where we
are now in Greenland, it’s just sand at the bottom and not a sensitive area. But if we are operating in a
tropical coral reef area, this ship has a full dynamic positioning system so we don't have to drop the anchor. It’s fantastic. It keeps the ship in place
in up to 30-knot winds, so it’s very, very effective. And that’s another
feature that allows us to operate in less-than-ideal conditions, because if we
have swell or chop or a lot of wind, we use the ship to create a lee to load
the Zodiacs safely.
TP: What was the most thrilling experience
you’ve had on a Seabourn expedition?
RW: For me one of the highlights was last year’s inaugural sailing
and naming ceremony in Antarctica. The plan was to put the ship into ice, disembark
all the guests on the ice, and have the naming ceremony on the ice. After a
couple of days of looking at the weather, we found a weather window where we thought
we could make it happen. And so we sailed into the Weddell the night before and
got where wanted to be at about midnight. We all woke up three hours later. The
ice was starting to get a little soft in some places, so we had to take our time
to find the right ice. By 7 o’clock, we put the ship in the ice, the sun came
up, there wasn’t a breath of wind, our guests disembarked, and we did the entire ceremony exactly how
we had planned it in the office six months before. It’s not often you can plan
something theoretically in an office for Antarctica and it actually works.
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