| IMO | 9159830 |
|---|---|
| Gross tonnage | 3,504 GT |
| Length | 100.0 m |
| Beam | 14 m |
| Passenger capacity (double) | 90 |
| Crew | 60 |
| Service speed | 14 knots |
| Builder | Chantiers Alstom Leroux Naval |
| Yard | Saint-Malo |
| Hull number | 625 |
| Launched | 1998 |
| Maiden voyage | 1998 |
| Operator | Grand Circle Cruises |
| Status | Active |
| All names | Clio; Tere Moana; Le Levant |
Overview
Clio is the smallest ship in this batch by an order of magnitude — a 3,504 GT, 100-metre, roughly 90-passenger yacht-style cruise ship — and she has had the most interesting naming history of the nine. Built in France in 1998 as Le Levant for Compagnie du Ponant, she was an early example of the French company's yacht-cruising formula: a ship small enough to enter harbours and anchorages closed to large cruise ships, operated to a luxury standard, and flagged for French overseas service. In December 2012 she transferred to Paul Gauguin Cruises as Tere Moana — Tahitian for "Ocean Traveller" — and in 2016 she became Clio for Grand Circle Cruise Line, the name and operator she carries in the dataset.
Key specifications
The dataset records Clio at 3,504 GT and 100.0 metres in length, IMO 9159830, hull number 625, yard Saint-Malo, launched and in service in 1998, status active, with operator Grand Circle Cruises. Several dataset fields are blank: builder, beam, capacity, speed and class are not recorded, and crew is blank dataset-wide by design. Her own article supplies the missing particulars, and they are given here as sourced article figures, not as dataset figures: beam 14 metres, draught 3.5 metres, speed 14 knots, capacity 90 passengers and crew 60. Those figures are consistent with her role — a shallow-draught ship (3.5 metres) that can work small ports, inlets and island anchorages.
The builder omission deserves a note. The dataset gives the yard locality, Saint-Malo, and hull number 625 but no builder name. Her article names the builder as the Alstom Leroux Naval shipyard at Saint-Malo, France (also rendered Chantiers Alstom Leroux Naval). Builder and hull number together — Alstom Leroux, yard 625 — are the reliable identifiers for this hull alongside IMO 9159830, and the missing builder is logged as a dataset gap rather than a contradiction.
Tonnage is the one figure on which all sources agree exactly: 3,504 GT in both the dataset and the article. In a batch where larger ships show spreads of several hundred tons between sources, that agreement reflects how stable the published record is for a ship that has never been lengthened or materially rebuilt.
Design and construction
Le Levant was built in 1998 at Saint-Malo, on the Brittany coast, a yard with a long record of smaller passenger and naval vessels rather than mega-ships. She was floated out in May 1998 in her article's account and entered service the same year. The design is best understood as a large yacht scaled up to cruise-ship regulation: a single, low hull, extensive open deck for her size, a small pool, and accommodation for about 90 guests in suite-scale cabins rather than the stacked balcony blocks of a large ship.
She has no class in the usual sense — no sister ships are recorded in the dataset or her article — and she should be read as a one-off small luxury hull, not as part of a production class.
Naming, launch and maiden voyage
She was launched in May 1998 as Le Levant, named for the Levant, the eastern Mediterranean, in keeping with Ponant's French geographical naming for its early yachts. No naming sponsor is recorded in the sources used for this guide, and none is asserted. She was christened for her second career on 29 December 2012 at Marigot, Saint Martin, as Tere Moana, with Mireille Bailey, wife of Paul Gauguin Cruises' chairman Richard Bailey, as godmother. For Grand Circle she became Clio, named, in that line's classicising convention, for the muse of history.
Career by operator
The dataset operator history — "Grand Circle Cruises; Ponant; Paul Gauguin Cruises" — contains the right three operators but not in chronological order, and its names field omits the first name. The sourced chronology from her article is:
| Period | Name | Operator |
|---|---|---|
| 1998–2012 | Le Levant | Compagnie du Ponant |
| 2012–2016 | Tere Moana | Paul Gauguin Cruises |
| 2016–present | Clio | Grand Circle Cruise Line (Grand Circle Cruises) |
As Le Levant she spent fourteen years with Ponant, the longest single chapter of her career, in luxury yacht cruising, initially focused on French territories and the Mediterranean and ranging more widely as the Ponant fleet grew around her. Her registry in that period was Mata-Utu, Wallis and Futuna, France.
In December 2012 she was refurbished and transferred to Paul Gauguin Cruises, the Tahiti specialist, as Tere Moana. The transfer included a refurbishment reported by CruiseMapper at about US $5 million, covering furniture, artwork, soft furnishings, lighting, carpets and finishes throughout. Paul Gauguin operated her not in French Polynesia, alongside its ship Paul Gauguin, but in Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America — an expansion experiment for a line otherwise defined by a single region. Her registry became Nassau, Bahamas.
In August 2015 Paul Gauguin announced her sale to Grand Circle; Grand Circle had confirmed the acquisition in June 2015 in its own announcements, and her last Tere Moana cruise ended in May 2016. Renamed Clio and reflagged to Valletta, Malta, she entered Grand Circle service in July 2016, owned within the Grand Circle group (recorded in her article as GCCL Cayman Fleet 1). She remains a Grand Circle ship in the dataset, status active.
Onboard character
On a 90-passenger ship, onboard character is intimacy and access rather than spectacle. Clio's public rooms, as described in accounts of the ship under her successive names, are two restaurants, a main lounge and bar with live piano music, a pool bar, a small spa, a fitness area, a boutique and a swimming pool, with a watersports marina platform used in suitable ports and snorkel equipment carried for guests. Room names have carried over and changed across her three identities and are not catalogued here as a current list; the design point is that everything is on a yacht scale, a short walk from any cabin, and shared by fewer than a hundred guests.
Major refits and incidents
The sourced refit is the December 2012 refurbishment for Paul Gauguin Cruises, described above, which prepared Tere Moana for her Caribbean, Latin American and European programme. Grand Circle likewise gave her a refit reported at about US $5 million in spring 2016, alongside the rename to Clio and reflagging to Malta, before her July 2016 debut for the line. No earlier or later major refit is asserted.
Sister ships and class
Clio has no recorded sister ships and no class name in the dataset or her article. She is a one-off hull from Alstom Leroux Naval, yard number 625. Her closest relatives are conceptual rather than structural: the other small yacht-cruise ships with which Ponant built its fleet in the 1990s, and the small ships Grand Circle operates alongside her. A directory should resist the temptation to group her into a class she does not belong to; her page stands on the hull's own three-name career.
Fate and where she is now
Clio is in active service for Grand Circle Cruise Line under IMO 9159830, status "Operating" in the dataset, registered at Valletta, Malta, in her article's account. No sale or retirement is recorded. Her fixed historical record — Saint-Malo-built in 1998 as Le Levant, Paul Gauguin's Tere Moana from 2012, Grand Circle's Clio from 2016 — is the complete hull identity that any future rename would extend, not replace, because the IMO number and yard number travel with the hull.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruise_ships, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Clio