1997 Onwards
In August 1998 the Odessa Sky was sold in an auction to the Dutch businessman Gerard van Leest for 16.5 million Deutsche Mark. The crew of the ship however refused to leave the ship unless they were paid the two years worth of salaries Blasco owed them, and even threathened to sink the ship should their demands not be met. A settlement was eventually reached where the crew were given flight tickets home and even money for new clothes, and the Odessa Sky could proceed to Bremerhaven for rebuilding for her new service.
On 27 March 1999 the Odessa Sky was renamed Club I and re-registered to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. From April 1999 onwards she made short cruises out of Rotterdam under the banner of Club Cruise. The Club 1 failed to find popularity in The Netherlands, and as a result the planned winter program was cancelled and the ship was laid up in September 1999. In December 1999 Nouvelles Frontieres, a France based group, chartered the Club 1 and renamed her Van Gogh for cruises around the Mediterranean and Caribbean. In 2002 she was chartered to the United Kingdom-based Travelscope.
On September 26, 2004 the Van Gogh, while outbound from Gibraltar to Tangier, collided with the tanker Spetses outside Gibraltar in heavy fog. The Van Gogh received heavy damage to her bow, but there were no injuries on either ship and the Van Gogh could return to Gibraltar for repairs under her own power. Later investigations revealed the Van Gogh had had been traveling at 14 kn (25.93 km/h), a speed considered unsafe under the weather conditions. Additionally the crew of the Van Gogh had neglected to give proper audio signals for restricted visibility and the crews of both vessels had neglected to keep proper radar watch. No emergency signal had been sounded on the Van Gogh before or after the accident, resulting in confusion amongst her passengers.
Traveloscope went bankrupt in December 2007, but Club Cruise took over the ship's planned 2008 world cruise. In January 2008, Club Cruise established a new subsidiary, Van Gogh Cruises, which took over all existing bookings for the Van Gogh and planned to continue to operate her in the UK market. Due to difficulties in acquiring a membership in the Association of British Travel Agents, Van Gogh Cruises were forced to suspend operations in April 2008. As a result the Van Gogh was chartered to the Russia-based Metropolis Tur for the 2008 northern hemisphere summer season.
During the final leg of her 2007/2008 world cruise, the Van Gogh was arrested by police in Funchal, Madeira on 1 April 2008, in a dispute over an unpaid debt from a previous operator. She was allowed to depart Funchal for Falmouth after some 48 hours on 3 April.
In July 2009, following the bankruptcy of Club Cruise, Van Gogh was sold in an auction at Eleusis, Greece to the Cyprus-based Salamis Cruises for $ 6.5 million. Van Gogh replaced the MS Salamis Glory on short cruises out of Limassol.
Read more about this topic: MS Salamis Filoxenia, Service History