The Isabelle is a RoPax - Ferry owned and service of the Estonian shipping company Tallink and currently operates the service between Riga and Stockholm . Her keel was laid on September 15, 1987 near Brodogradilište Split , Croatia. She has been in service on the Baltic Sea since July 4, 1989, previously as Isabella .
The Isabella is the second of four identical ships: her sister ships Amorella and Gabriella are currently in service with the Viking Line (as was the Isabella at the time ), the third and youngest sister ship, the Crown Seaways , is in service with Det Forenede Dampskibs-Selskab (DFDS) and operates the route Copenhagen - Oslo . The contract for the construction of the Isabella was given in February 1986 by SF Line . Before the Isabella started operating the Viking Line, she was visiting the Finnish city of Pori , where she was presented to the public on July 3, 1989. Originally it was planned to replace the Rosella on the Naantali - Mariehamn - Kappelskär route . The local authorities in Kappelskär failed to plan to expand local capacities, so that the much larger Isabella could not be loaded and unloaded there. As a consequence, it was used in the summer months on the Naantali-Stockholm route. In the remaining periods, she operated 24-hour cruises from Helsinki . In the spring of 1992 the ship was rebuilt in Naantali. The SkyBar was installed on deck 11, the second car deck on deck 5 was converted into new cabins. In addition, there were minor adjustments to the paintwork, relating to a red stripe along deck 6. After the work, SF Line decided to use the Isabella all year round on the cruise routes from Helsinki from summer 1992 . In this context, she called at the port of Visby, among others . From the summer of 1994 she swapped her route with the Cinderella for three years and from then on operated the route between the Finnish and Swedish capitals. In 1996, the Isabella was used for “picnic cruises” to Tallinn during off-duty lay times in Helsinki . It turned out that these trips were unprofitable. So this offer was discontinued after only one season. After Viking Line acquired the sister ship Gabriella from Euroway in 1997 and took over the Isabella's route, the Isabella found her new area of operation on the Turku- Mariehamn-Stockholm route, together with her sister Amorella . Furthermore, she was used as a reserve ferry during regular shipyard stays of the other ferries. In 2000 the Isabella was rebuilt in Naantali. During this stay, the rear of the fuselage was modified. Naantali was the ship's destination again in September 2007. This time the duty-free shop, the disco and the bar were completely renovated, and two restaurants were given new concepts. These measures were part of a large-scale modernization of the Viking Line fleet.
With the commissioning of the new Viking Grace in January 2013, which immediately took over the Isabella's route , she carried out the services of the Amorella , which was in the dock at the time.
Sale to Tallink
After the Amorella docking period , the Viking Line planned to sell the Isabella . In the event that no buyer could be found, it was planned to operate on the Helsinki-Tallinn route from summer 2013. On April 5, 2013, Viking Line announced that a buyer could be found for the Isabella with its competitor Tallink. This made a planned mission obsolete, although tickets for the service to Tallinn had already been sold. The ship was handed over on April 22, 2013 and renamed Isabelle . The ship sailed under the flag of Latvia , the home port was Riga . As a first mission for Tallink, the Isabelle replaced the Silja Festival on the Stockholm-Riga route. In Tallinn she underwent a shipyard stay until May 5, 2013, during which her paintwork was also adapted. Their first trip on the new route was made just a day later.
