The ship that nearly was not
Ritz-Carlton signed with Hijos de J. Barreras of Vigo in June 2017 for roughly €250 million. It was the Galician yard's first cruise ship of the type, and she was meant to debut in February 2020 — the best supported of several dates in contemporaneous reporting. By the fall of 2019 the yard's president had been removed over cost overruns on this hull and Barreras had filed for pre-insolvency. In February 2020 a Ritz-Carlton subsidiary took on the overruns. In March it assumed oversight of the yard. And in July 2020 it bought the shipyard outright — the customer purchasing its own builder, because that was what finishing the ship appeared to require.
It did not work. She was towed from Vigo to Santander in March 2021 and completed by a conversion and repair yard instead. Barreras filed formal bankruptcy in January 2022, had its productive unit sold on for €14.7 million, and was liquidated that July after 130 years, owing around €104 million to subcontractors. Evrima finally carried paying guests on 15 October 2022, about 33 months late, with roughly 138 voyages canceled behind her.
They bought the shipyard. It still was not enough.
What happened between 2017 and 2022
Her build is the most heavily documented in the collection, and it is worth understanding rather than skipping, because it explains both why she exists at all and why she is the only one of her kind.
And yet: what she is now
None of that is a reason to avoid her. The delay was a failure of shipbuilding rather than of design, and what emerged is the most yacht-like ship in the collection by some distance.
At 298 guests on about 26,500 gross tons, she is a little over half the size of her fleetmates and carries a third fewer people. That buys the thing the marketing photographs are always selling and the bigger ships cannot quite deliver: anchoring off somewhere small, dropping The Marina at the stern, and having the whole ship's company in the water without it feeling like a queue. The Marina Terrace beside it has a retractable glass roof and turns from a lunch room into a bar as the afternoon goes.
Her signature table is S.E.A., created with Sven Elverfeld, the three-Michelin-star chef of Aqua at The Ritz-Carlton in Wolfsburg: twenty-eight seats, five courses, and a supplement. Around it sit The Evrima Room, Talaat Nam, The Pool House and Mistral, plus a top-deck cigar lounge. The spa has five treatment rooms, against eleven on the larger pair — one of several places where you can feel the difference in scale.
Two numbers are worth putting side by side, because they cut against the easy assumption. Evrima carries 298 guests and 246 crew; the sisters carry 448 and 374. Those are almost exactly the same ratio — a shade over one crew member for every one and a quarter guests on all three. What you buy on Evrima is not more attentive service. It is a smaller crowd. Anyone selling you the small ship on the grounds that the staffing is better has not checked.
The rest of her is 624 feet on eight guest decks, diesel-electric through two azimuthing pods, eighteen knots, Maltese flag. Beyond the restaurants there is a top-deck cigar lounge, an observation lounge and a library-ish living room; the spa sits on deck nine. Two things the line does not publish and we will not invent: her draft, and any stabilizer specification — which on a ship this size is a fair question, and one we would put to them for your particular itinerary rather than guess at here.
Design throughout is by Tillberg Design of Sweden, and she shares no lineage at all with Ilma and Luminara, which came from a different country, a different yard and different designers. She is not an early draft of them. She is the same idea built once, at half the size.
Where she gives ground
- The smallest guest count in the collection by a wide margin, and the harbors that come with it
- A marina afternoon that feels private rather than scheduled
- S.E.A., which exists on this ship and on neither of the others
- A yacht rather than a small ship — the distinction is real at 298 guests and blurs at 450
- Shorter European and Caribbean runs, with Hawaii and the South Pacific from late 2027
- A wider dining bench and eleven spa treatment rooms rather than five
- The expanded marina, with its floating platform and netted sea pool
- LNG propulsion, which is the sisters' hardware and not hers
- Newer finishes — she is a 2022 ship and has had no refit we can find, while the sisters are two and three years younger
- Alaska or Asia, neither of which she sails
Worth weighing: Evrima has no documented refit or drydock since entering service. That is unremarkable for a ship of her age, but it does mean her interiors are original, and the sisters are newer by two and three years respectively.
Not worth weighing: the build saga itself. It was resolved four years ago, the yard involved no longer exists, and the two ships built since came from Chantiers de l'Atlantique, a yard with no comparable history. Whatever the 2017 to 2022 period says about that shipyard, it says nothing about the ship you would board in 2027.
If you asked us to pick
Questions we get about Evrima
Why was Evrima delayed for so long?
Eight postponement announcements between 2020 and 2022, with several causes. The Spanish yard building her, Hijos de J. Barreras of Vigo, ran into cost overruns on the ship and filed for pre-insolvency in October 2019. A Ritz-Carlton subsidiary assumed the overruns, then took over oversight, then bought the yard outright in July 2020. She was ultimately towed to Santander and completed elsewhere. Later delays were attributed to the pandemic, supply chains, a third-party engineering audit, and a metalworkers' strike in Cantabria. She first carried guests on 15 October 2022, roughly 33 months late.
Did Ritz-Carlton really buy the shipyard?
Yes. A Ritz-Carlton subsidiary acquired 100% of Hijos de J. Barreras in July 2020, having already assumed the cost overruns that February and taken over oversight of the yard that March. It did not save the project or the yard: Evrima was moved to Santander for completion, and Barreras filed formal bankruptcy in January 2022 and was liquidated that July after 130 years of operation.
Is Evrima the same as Ilma and Luminara?
No, and not even nearly. Evrima is about 26,500 gross tons carrying 298 guests in 149 suites; Ilma and Luminara are around 46,750 tons carrying 448 and 452 guests. She was built in Spain to a Tillberg Design of Sweden brief; they were built at Chantiers de l'Atlantique in France with interiors by AD Associates. They also run on LNG and she does not. She is a class of one.
Does a smaller ship mean better service on Evrima?
Not on the numbers, and it is worth knowing before you pay for it. Evrima carries 298 guests and 246 crew; Ilma and Luminara carry 448 and 374. That works out at almost exactly the same crew-to-guest ratio on all three — a little over one crew member per one and a quarter guests. What the smaller ship actually buys you is a smaller crowd, shorter queues at the marina, and access to harbors the larger pair cannot enter. It does not buy you a higher staffing level, whatever the brochure photography implies.
Has Evrima been refurbished?
Not that we can document. We found no refit or drydock for her in any source, which is unremarkable for a ship that entered service in late 2022 but does mean her interiors are as delivered. If a current condition report matters to your decision, ask us and we will find out for your specific sailing rather than guess.
Ask us about Evrima
Tell us what you want the ship to do.
Dates, region, and whether guest count or venue choice matters more. We will tell you plainly whether Evrima or one of her larger fleetmates fits — or whether another line does.
An independent advisory · not affiliated with or endorsed by The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection. Answers draw on this guide and are checked against current information before any booking.
The yard that struggled to build her no longer exists. She does, and she is the only one of her kind.
Ask us about an Evrima voyage