The FINNJET-Route earlier and today
Traveling on the tracks of the Hanse

The historic tradeway of the Hanse between the european continent and Finland was opened in 1962 for travellers, when the carferry "Hansa Express" started service between Helsinki and Travemünde. Since then, this route was served by many ships of Finnlines and FAA (later EFFOA and owner of Silja Line) like Finnhansa, Finnpartner, Finlandia and many more. Later, both comapies acted together under Finnlines' name and started 1977 with the biggest, fastest, longest and most modern ferry of the world: GTS FINNJET. But shortly later the ways of both companies went their own again and EFFOA took over Finnjet, which was then introduced into Silja's fleet in 1987. Other ships followed at Finnlines but only Finnjet remained a synonym for the Finland-Germany link. Further 10 years later, the route Helsinki-Travemünde was declared a seasonal Summerroute. For thes rest of the year Finnjet was now in service between Helsinki and Tallinn. Meanwhile, the people's unsureness about the future of Finnjet grew and in 1998 the end of a 20-year-lasting era became fact: The end of the "Helsinki-Travemünde" link. Instead of, the ship moved to a new summer route between Rostock, Tallinn and Helsinki in 1999, to keep the possibility alive to sell Tax Free products on board. In 2001 another competitor came by, the greek Superfast Ferries. Their planned traffic was between Rostock and Hanko and so there was actually no direct competition between any of the ferries connecting Finland with the continental europe. The short stop in Tallinn, formerly only planned as Duty-Free-Stop, gained more and more importance concerning the passengernumbers. However, the imminent joining of Estonia to the EU in 2004 forced Silja Line to make decisions. It was expected that the off season's service would become unprofitable and the passengervolume to Helsinki would keep abating. So Silja decided to do something completely new: After a big refurbishment, the ship should connect Germany with Russia all year round and keep the important stop in Tallinn in it's schedule. Else than between Germany and Finland, this route was expected to be less depending on the season since the main part of the passengers on board would be City travellers. The potential is there, but the calculation did not tally however. Political barriers (Visa) are keeping the Russians and Germans from travelling. Afterall many things remaiend as they were, most passengers still travel to Tallinn and Helsinki and the average utilization between Tallinn and St. Petersburg was low. For the off season, the traffic had to be suspended and the ship was laid up for the first time in it's 27-year-lasting history in Rostock in September 2004. Current information is that there will be no change in this and Finnjet will be in traffic only in summertime. At least one tries to charter the ship out to somewhere instead of laying it up.

And now the detailed description of the current route of GTS FINNJET: ROSTOCK-TALLINN-ST.PETERSBURG

TOTAL DISTANCE ROS-TAL-SPB: 747NM (1383 km)

In this example we assume that the ship always takes the eastroute around Gotland northbound and always the westroute going south. At least southbound Finnjet always goes this way in the current schedule according to captain Magnus Slotte, northbound I have seen both ways in use. A lot of things play a role here and in the end the final decision is anyway made by the Captain if he passes Gotland from east or west. It is similar with the speeds stated here, these can of course vary quite much, depending on things like weather, route or delays.

ROSTOCK - TALLINN - ST. PETERSBURG					ST. PETERSBURG - TALLINN - ROSTOCK
No.	Name	Time	Speed	Estonian	Speed	Time	Name	No.
	ROSTOCK	18:00		Time!		19:00	ST PETERSBURG
1	Tonne 4	18:40	16 kn		14 kn	22:00	Kronstadt	10
2	Hammerodde	00:00	22 kn		14 kn	02:00	Moshchnyy	9
3	Ölands Södra Grund	03:15	24 kn		13 kn	04:00	Gogland	8
4	Hoburg	06:30	25 kn		12 kn	08:00	Kasuuni "Tallinn"	7
5	Ristna	14:15	24 kn		09:30 - 10:30		TALLINN
6	Naissaar	17:30	20 kn		20 kn	11:40	Naissaar	6
	TALLINN	18:30 -19:00			23 kn	15:00	Ristna	5
7	Kasuuni "Tallinn"	19:45	18 kn		24 kn	19:20	Faarö	4b
8	Gogland	00:00	17 kn		24 kn	21:00	Visby	4a
9	Moshchnyy	01:30	16 kn		23 kn	01:45	Ölands Södra Grund	3
10	Kronstadt	03:30	15 kn		21 kn	05:15	Hammerodde	2
	ST. PETERSBURG	07:00			16 kn	12:15	Tonne 4	1
						13:00	ROSTOCK

 

Crossing	Distance*	Time	Average Speed
ROSTOCK-TALLINN	ca. 554 nm	24,5 h	22,6 knots
TALLINN-ST. PETERSBURG	ca. 193 nm	12 h	16,1 knots
ST. PETERSBURG-TALLINN	ca. 193 nm	14,5 h	13,3 knots
TALLINN-ROSTOCK	ca. 560 nm	26,5 h	21,1 knots

* The Distance is depending on the route chosen by the captain and may vary

And finally, some information about FINNJET's summer traffic between 1999 and 2003:

Map only shows rough data

Sources: Picture: FINNJETweb | Data: Silja Line leaflet; Salomon Kaukiainen

FINNJETweb.com
© Mathias Saken 2001-2005