Cable Layer ILE DE RÉ

Any other time that I visited Vancouver's Canada Place pier, a cruise ship would be docked. However during our March 2004 visit, the cable layer ILE DE RÉ looked the part quite well. Starting out as a RO/RO ferry, she was converted to a cable ship by Remontowa shipyards in Poland in 2002. More recently, ILE DE RÉ has been seen laying fibre option cable between Japan and Australia. She's a sister to also Alcatel Lucent owned ILE DE BATZ which sat in front of our Jamaican resort in 2010 laying cable between Jamaica and Cuba. Though also based in France, much of her crew were from Australia and we often enjoyed chatting with them while indulging on the odd Red Stripe beer or rum laced pina colodas during happy hour. Ah Jamaica, NO PROBLEM!!