The city will always have Streak Spirit and Hon Spirit, but on Jan. 1 the Spirit of Baltimore will steam out of the Inner Harbor forever.
The 172-foot-long, $2.8 million ship is giving up on its four-year attempt to make money selling lunch and dinner cruises plying the Patapsco, and will head north to a far more lucrative river: the Hudson.
The renamed "Spirit Cruise" will berth off mid-town Manhattan and offer cruises around New York Harbor.
Although some of the ship's 20 full-time workers will be transferred, all of the approximately 100 singing waiters and waitresses will lose their part-time jobs by the end of this year, said James DellaPace, sales and marketing manager for the Baltimore office of Spirit Cruises Inc.
The decision drew regrets from some tourism officials yesterday, but it also prompted a little hand rubbing from competitors who hoped to pick up some of the company's business.
"Obviously, this is a loss for Baltimore," said Dale Garvin, acting director of the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association.
Even Michael Stappler, president of the company's biggest competitor, Harbor Cruises Ltd., called the decision "bittersweet."
Spirit Cruises advertised heavily and brought in new customers. That helped rival Harbor Cruises, because it charged $7 less than Spirit's standard $50 ticket for a weekend dinner cruise.
In fact, Spirit Cruises helped bring in new customers for other competitors, too. From just one ship a decade ago, the industry has grown to five operators running a total of six large boats from the harbor or Fells Point.
But Mr. Stappler, owner of the Bay Lady and the Lady Baltimore, said he expects to benefit even more from the departure of his only major competition in the Inner Harbor.
Baltimore-based Harbor Cruises, the first company to operate a dinner boat out of the Inner Harbor, fought an intense political battle to deny Spirit Cruises docking and parking space when it started here in 1992.
Although the competition hurt his company in its first few years, Harbor Cruises has regained what it lost, Mr. Stappler said, noting that he expects his ships to pull in about 400,000 customers and $5 million in revenue this year.
And with the departure of the only other big dinner cruise ship operating out of the Inner Harbor, those numbers should go up next year, Mr. Stappler said. "It is an opportunity to expand what we do."
