Invergordon Port’s Busiest Day of the Season

The port of Invergordon will enjoy its busiest cruise liner day of the season on Thursday when it plays host to three ships in the one day.

The largest and most spectacular of this year’s arrivals, “Golden Princess”, makes a welcome return with around 2,600 American passengers on board. Also in port will be the “Vistamar” carrying 260 German passengers on a round-Britain cruise and the “Hebridean Princess”, which will arrive in port late on Wednesday at the end of a cruise round the Norwegian fjords. Those passengers will disembark and a new group will set off on Thursday for a 7 night cruise to Orkney and Shetland. Although the smallest of the three ships in port, “Hebridean Princess” has been in the news recently as the vessel was chartered by Her Majesty The Queen for a cruise to celebrate her 80th birthday. 

Weighing 109,000 gross tons and with 13 decks, “Golden Princess” will dominate the town when she ties up at the Admiralty Pier around 07.00 hours. What looks like some kind of space capsule perched above the stern of the ship is actually “Skywalker’s Night Club”. 

In addition to the usual selection of shore excursions laid on for the passengers, Invergordon will be staging a craft fair in the town’s Arts Centre on the High St where there will be demonstrations of spinning, patchwork and silversmithing. Also in the Arts Centre, Birchwood Highland will be holding a coffee morning and there will be an exhibition of local photography.

The two “Princesses” are expected to sail around 6 pm, with “Vistamar” remaining in the firth until around 9.30 pm.

The Highland Council’s Tourism Development Officer, Gordon Ireland, said: “With three ships in port in the one day, there will be almost 3,000 passengers enjoying a brief visit to the Highlands. For most of them it will be their first visit and we hope they will be persuaded to return in future for a longer land based holiday. The cruise market is growing faster than any other aspect of tourism and Invergordon will see some 40,000 cruise passengers this year.”