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https://www.barrons.com/articles/20-minutes-with-ponant-cruises-mathieu-petiteau-01663000499

Last November, Ponant’s Le Commandant Charcot made its maiden Antarctic voyage after six years of development. The sailing marked the culmination of a goal to take travelers to places where tourists have never been before—including the North Pole and remote regions of Antarctica. 

“We started with a crazy project to take people on the path of the French polar explorer Captain Jean-Baptiste Charcot, going where no other vessel is capable of going,” says Mathieu Petiteau, Ponant’s newbuilding and research and development director. “It was pushing the polar adventure to the limits to offer something that is comparable to going to the moon. There has always been the parallel between space exploration and polar exploration.”

To achieve such an audacious goal, Ponant built the Charcot as a Polar Class 2 (PC2) vessel with unprecedented ice-breaking capacity to safely sail through sea ice up to three meters (about 10 feet) thick. “This is for now, and I think forever, the only PC2 vessel of this category ever built in the world, because it is such an extreme thing to do,” Petiteau says. 

But Ponant was not content to simply reach formerly unreachable destinations. It also had to deliver a luxurious cruise experience—from the 123 spacious suites and staterooms designed to blend into the stunning landscapes outside the windows to a culinary program directed by the famed French chef Alain Ducasse, to an expert polar expedition team that leads daily excursions and activities with varying levels of adventure.

In addition, sustainability was a priority, especially when sailing in such pristine natural environments. The Charcot, which is the first hybrid-electric polar passenger vessel, has a number of innovative systems—from power to waste management to water purification—that minimize the ship’s environmental impact.   

Penta spoke with Petiteau about the development of this unprecedented vessel and why it delivers a cruise experience like no other.

PENTA: What is the origin story of Le Commandant Charcot?

Mathieu Petiteau: We started six years ago with this ambition, but we really did not know how to do it—there was no other vessel in the world going to the North Pole except a Russian nuclear icebreaker. The idea was to ask the specialists, Aker Arctic of Finland.

At the beginning, they thought we were completely crazy. An icebreaker and a cruise vessel cannot be mixed together. An icebreaker is a heavy-duty vessel that makes a lot of noise and vibration, and it’s not comfortable at all. A passenger ship is the opposite. At the beginning they were a bit skeptical. But in the end, they said, “Let’s go crazy, folks!”

What was the process?For four months, we collected a lot of data and performed environmental analyses to come up with some design criteria for the temperature, ice thickness and the size of obstacles.

To go to the North Pole between June and September, the vessel must withstand minus-25 degrees Celsius. We needed to be able to break 2.5 meters of thick, intact ice—not because we will always encounter this type of ice, but because we cannot get trapped if we want to safely come back to port on time to pick up new passengers and maintain the schedule. 

Then, the vessel needed to be able pass through obstacles—ice ridges, where two ice plates are pushed together by the current or wind to create very thick ice. This is impossible to pass through with a standard ice breaker. So, we needed to develop a special feature to guarantee we will never be blocked by ice. 

What is the special feature?

We have very high maneuverability with a dual-acting motor that is possible with the banana-shaped hull, which has been optimized to smoothly break the ice going forward by having the full weight of the vessel on the ice to break it like a piece of chocolate. 

We can also break the ice going astern, and this is absolutely new. The nuclear Russian icebreaker is not able to do that. We can go backwards using the propellers as a milling system to go through ice ridges more than 15 meters thick. This is why this vessel is absolutely unique. 

How did you factor in sustainability issues?

We needed to think about emissions to have the smallest impact on the environment. That’s why we selected liquefied natural gas (LNG) because the CO2 emissions are reduced by 25%. There is no more sulfur, no nitrogen oxide, and fewer particles. This is the best fuel available today. We also use a new type of membrane tank that allows us to store a large quantity of LNG that gives us energy autonomy for one to two months. 

What is the hybrid aspect? 

We have 50 tons of lithium-ion batteries on board that help us keep the engine running on LNG efficiently instead of running with more emissions. It also improves safety to be able to run only on batteries. If you lose one generator, you always keep the propulsion supplied. It also gives us the ability to run on zero-emission mode when we are at anchor.

What are the other sustainability innovations?

The garbage is a big issue. When a vessel is sailing in a polar area, there is zero discharge at sea. So, you have to keep it on board, and that means a huge volume of storage. 

We also use a specific water treatment system, so we can recycle water. And since we are using LNG, we have very little oily water or oily sludge, and we collect what we have and discharge it in a port. 

We have also banned the use of plastic water bottles. We produce drinking water on board with a reverse osmosis system. We treat the water to make it potable and remove everything that would make it taste bad.

How did building this ship compare to others in Ponant’s portfolio?

Compared to other vessels with approximately the same passenger capacity, this vessel is three times bigger—in volume, weight, and price. The amount of investment made in sustainability and technical innovations represents about 20% of the ship’s cost—that’s a huge amount. Also, the standards have been increased in terms of the space per passenger, quality of food, crew-to-passenger ratio and interior design. This is surely one of the most expensive vessels in the world. 

Another part of the cost is the investment we made in the scientific equipment on board. We wanted to offer this to our passengers and raise consciousness about how fragile the polar areas are. Besides that, the ambition was to offer scientists a vessel for doing polar research during exploration, continuing what had been initiated by Jean-Baptiste Charcot. 

Did you encounter any unexpected challenges? 

Something that was a real challenge was the onboard safety. According to Polar Code rules, we had to demonstrate that we are able to survive for five days after abandoning ship. How can we evacuate 460 people at the North Pole on land, ice, or in water at minus 25 degrees Celsius? It’s quite unusual.

There was nothing available on the market, so we had to develop our own equipment. We found some industrial partners and developed prototypes and tested them in Antarctica and Greenland. Then we produced and tested the equipment and trained the crew. 

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Last November, Ponant’s Le Commandant Charcot made its maiden Antarctic voyage after six years of development.

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