Twenty-Seven Years With One Line, and Now It Sails From Mumbai

Cordelia Cruises has taken delivery of the former Norwegian Sky under a long-term lease, the Indian operator confirmed on September 15. The ship completed its final voyage for Norwegian Cruise Line on September 9, ending a 27-year career with the brand, and has since moved to a Turkish yard for refurbishment. It will re-enter service as Cordelia Sky, becoming the largest vessel in a fleet that has effectively been the whole of India’s domestic cruise market, and giving the line a second hull for the first time in its existence.

The inaugural Cordelia season now begins on October 23, sailing from Mumbai, slightly later than the September debut originally floated when the deal was announced. The opening deployment is built around short voyages of two to five nights, including sailings to Goa and to Lakshadweep, the coral archipelago off India’s southwest coast that has been cautiously opened to leisure traffic in recent years. From June 2027 the ship is scheduled to run seven-night Chennai to Singapore voyages with calls in Malaysia and Thailand, a considerably more ambitious itinerary than anything the line has attempted.

India has been one of the more closely watched cruise markets of the past five years, with government policy support for domestic port infrastructure and a middle class that has shown real appetite for short-sea holidays that do not require a visa or a long-haul flight. What the market has conspicuously lacked is tonnage. Cordelia has operated a single ship for most of its life, which caps how much of the calendar it can fill and forces it to choose between homeports rather than serving several. A second, larger hull changes both what it can schedule and how fast it can grow.

For the ship itself, this is a second act rather than a retirement. Vessels of Norwegian Sky’s vintage are routinely sold or leased on to operators serving newer markets, and the pattern has been visible across the industry this year as the major lines take delivery of far larger newbuilds. The refurbishment in Turkey will determine how much of the original interior survives the transition. The larger change is simply geographic: a hull designed and built for short Caribbean runs out of Florida will now spend its winters working the Arabian Sea.

Sources: Cruise Industry News, Cruise Arabia & Africa