Aboard MV Nordic Empress (special) -- Capt. Michael Lachtaridis, master of this 48,000-ton Royal Caribbean cruise ship, credits a visit to the Port of Haifa, Israel, with changing his career for the better.

Like many of the men who live on the Greek island of Samos, Lactaridis followed a family tradition of going to sea. His grandfather was the captain of a cargo vessel; his father was a ship's engineer, his uncle also was a captain. So Lactaridis went to the maritime academy, and began working his way up through the oficer's ranks aboard cargo ships.

He recalled being aboard a refrigerated ship which took on frozen kosher meet in Rosario, Argentina, for delivery in Israel. The kosher meat was separated from the non-kosher meat by a plywood partition in the cargo hold. For reasons of economy, "you cannot leave with only a small amount in the hold; you have to fill it up with other products," Lachtaridis said.

From Argentina, he said, the ship went north to Brazil, where it took on a load of "kosher orange juice." "That was strange to me because in Israel they have oranges," Lactaridis said. "You know what happened? We took the kosher orange juice from Brazil to Haifa and Ashdod. Then we returned (from Ashdod) to Haifa, and loaded again. Our cargo was kosher orange juice that was going from Haifa to London." Lachtaridis said he could not figure out whether it was the same orange juice, simply relabeled, or whether it was a different shipment of orange juice, which perhaps the cargo from Brazil was meant to replace. At any rate, while he was in Haifa, he learned that

ON THE BRIDGE--Caotain Michael Lachtaridis reviewed charts as passsengers touredthe bridge of the M.V Nordic Empress while the cruise ship was in port in Hamilton, Bermuda.

a friend of his was serving as second officer on the MV Atlantis, a passenger ship that was docked nearby. "He invited me to go onboard. And I saw that the environment was different, that there were people around; that they had a nice dining room and that they ate with the passengers and talked with the passengers.

"It was a totally different environment than a cargo ship,where there are only 25 people," he said. "I like people."

So Lachtaridis took a job aboard a ferry line that plied between Greece and Italy, and later went to work for the Greek cruise line Epirotiki. That led to a job aboard the cruise ship Calypso, which was purchased by a company called Western Cruise Lines. 

Renamed as the Azure Seas, that ship subsequently made 3- and 4-day cruises to Ensenada from Los Angeles, stopping in San Diego on the four day cruise, just as Royal Caribbean's Viking Serenade does now. Lachtaridis remembers San Diego well, as he was relief captain for the ship which called in our city once a week between 1984 and 1986.

When he wasn't aboard Western Cruise Line's Admiral Seas, he was aboard the Emerald Seas owned by Eastern Cruise Lines, a sister company. Eventually both companies were merged into Admiral Cruise Lines. Admiral in turn was merged into RCCL.

In 1987, Lachtaridis went to France for 18 months to serve as inspection captain for RCCL as the Legend of The Seas was constructed. He then brought the ship from Europe to New York, and down to Miami, and then through the Panama Canal to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Vancouver, where it was based during the summer for cruises to Alaska.

His current ship, M.V. Nordic Empress, was built in 1990 and inaugurated in ceremonies in which singer Gloria Estevan broke a bottle of champagne against the bow. The ship has sailed primarily on Caribbean itineraries as well as on the New York-to-Bermuda run.

With all the women who come aboard the ship as passengers, Lachtaridis said he figured it was a matter of time until he would eventually meet one who was special. As it turned out, he met such a woman, but not on the ship. He met his wife at a hospital in Wales, where he had escorted his nephew for a hernia operation. She was a nurse there.

Before the couple was married, "I explained to my wife that we had, at that time, long contracts of nine months or more. " During the first such contract after his marriage, "I left her with my parents (on Samos) and my parents didn't speak any word of English, so the poor girl, she was walking around the whole day with a dictionary and a notebook."

Mari Lachtaridis learned to speak Greek from the same person who had taught the captain, his mother. Not only that "she taught her all the recipes, so now she is like a Greek lady."

Today, Lachtaridis' contract permits him to alternate "14 weeks on board and 14 weeks at home, and she stays with me on the ship at least one moth of every contract," Lachtaridis said.