GEESTIDE reefer vessel (Geest Tide)

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Built under yard No. 722 as a reefer vessel (banana boat) by Scott Lithgow at Glasgow for the Geest Industries Ltd. Geest Line), Boston, U.K.
26 April 1971 launched under the name GEESTTIDE. (Correct name is with two t)
Tonnage 5.871 gross, 3.064 net, 7.629 dwt, dim. 489.7 x 63.2 x 27.8ft. (draught).
Powered by one 2SA 2-cyl. Scotts-Sulzer diesel, 12.000 bhp., speed 21 knots, 1 screw.
Passenger accommodation for 12 passengers.

Used in the liner service between the U.K and the West Indies Islands in the Caribbean. Outward with general cargo, homeward loaded with tropical fruits most bananas.
The Geest Line originates in the Netherlands, and was founded by the Dutch family Geest a bulb grower, who in 1935 founded a company in the U.K. to sell his bulbs.
After World War II the company exported lettuce and tomatoes from the Westland a district between Rotterdam and Den Haag to the U.K.
Around 1960 the company began a service to the Caribbean and ordered in Holland their first reefer vessels for the banana trade.
The set of stamps issued by St Vincent in 1975 shows the growing and handling of the bananas, and the 70c stamp depict the GEESTTIDE loading boxes bananas on pallets, alongside the pier in Kingstown, I have been many times alongside this pier when making a charter voyage for the Geest Line. Loading took two days, the farmers commenced cutting in the morning when they know the vessel would arrive that day, loading commenced 18.00 till the harvest of that day was loaded, the next day was a repeat of the first one, and around 02.00 we sailed to the next island to start loading again around 18.00. Mostly we made calls at three islands before heading to Barry Docks in the Bristol Channel for discharging.
After 1994 The Geest Line did not more own vessels but use only charter vessels till today. The company still exist but sold in 1996 the banana division. The Geest Line home page gives that she are still trading now from Southampton with 4 charter vessels belonging to the company I have been sailing for around 35 years.

The GEESTTIDE was sold in 1981 to the U.S.S.R. and renamed KULDIGA, and after the collapse of the communist system transferred to Latvian Shipping Co., Latvia in 1992, not renamed.

Arrived 15 August 1993 at Chittagong, Taiwan for scrapping.

St Vincent 1975 70c sg450, scott 429.
Grenada 1980 90c sg1095A, scott?

Source: Blauwe Wimpel, Register of Merchant ships completed in 1971. Geest website.