Arka Kinari 

(ex Mariarosa)

An Invited Friend of The Harrison Butler Association
The Scooner built in 1947

  
 

Arka Kinari
Arka Kinari with her flamboyant new paint job

Arka Kinari : All Done Up with Nowhere to Go, June 2020
Arka Kinari is becoming one of the great boating stories of a world in lockdown. Intended to tour the world, highlighting the big environmental issues through performance art from the boat itself, she and her crew have found themselves in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, bound for Indonesia, as the world closes down. Recent news stories have focussed of the plight of a boat without any open port of call. Here, however, the background of this “breaking” news story will be probed.
Although not reported elsewhere, it turns out that Arka Kinari is not the boat's original name. As Marierosa, she was built in 1947 in Neptunwerft, a major shipyard on the German Baltic Coast. Regarded as a multi-purpose vessel, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) assigned her tasks from their Fishery and Land Survey offices. At the end of the 1970s she was laid up in Keil. Marierosa's conversion into a schooner for sightseeing cruises in the Baltic took place in 1986. She was often thereafter to be seen at Tall Ships Regattas, offering daytrips. She was much admired and photographed. I bet that few of those who have been aboard Marierosa realise that this is the boat now in the news.
Her rebirth as Arka Kinari occurred in a flurry of manic activity during 2019 with the purchase and fitting out of the boat for multimedia performance. By August enough had been done to allow her to set sail from the Netherlands for a “full-on” voyage to the Canaries via Morocco. At the Los Cristianos shipyard in Tenerife the artist Shrina (aka Brent Allen Spears) oversaw a team of painters who gave Arka Kinari her unique and distinctive “razzle dazzle” showbusiness livery. By February 2020 the boat had berthed in Puerto Ángel in Mexico, there performing. The next stop was Hawaii, by which time it was clear that the Corona virus was a fast escalating major global issue. After the stopover there, Indonesia was the next destination but it then closed all ports. At the start of May, the brave decision was taken to set sail anyway. Which is how this band of ten wandering artists have ended up in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with no place to land and the typhoon season on the way.

Location 31st May 2020
Arka Kinari's location at sea in the middle of the Pacific Ocean,
heading east to a “closed” Indonesia, on 3rd June 2020

Arka Kinara Statistics
Built : 1947 by Neptunwerft Rostock, Germany
LOA : 82' 0"
LWL : 21' 0"
Beam : 18' 7"
Draught : 8' 6"
Displacement : 80 tons TM
Call Sign : PE9711
MMSI : 244615045
Lloyd's Register : N° ------

Nova aboard Arka Kinari
Nova in performance aboard Arka Kinari

Arka Kinari Custodians & Home Ports
Nova & Grey Filastine (2019-2020...) Netherlands

Mariarosa in 2008
Mariarosa in 2008; much admired and photographed

Arka Kinari Links
Arka Kinari's website
BBC News article on Arka Kinari's plight, May 2020

Page last updated : June 2020

 
  

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