chengkp75

And you know this how? From your years of conning large vessels?

How wrong you may be. If it is found that the Captain followed all procedures and protocols outlined in the company's ISM Code (International Safety Management), then no blame will be assigned. The maritime industry has moved past the "blame" culture of management, and uses the root cause analysis method, where the object is to find the reason for the incident and modify policies and procedures to prevent it from happening again. It is found that if no blame is assigned, you get more truthful statements from those involved, and a better understanding of the dynamics of the situation. See above. You've got good eyes to judge that distance from a phone video. But anyway, you know what was being discussed both at the aft mooring station and the bridge, to know they had no idea there was a problem, or that they were doing something about it.

Actually, they do "drive", if by that you mean they "have the conn" (i.e. give orders). Most places require a pilot by law, and he is given authority to conn the ship by the Captain and by the country. As a non-employee of the cruise line, the pilot (and they are rarely "Captains") is not allowed to touch any control on the ship. However, the Captain rarely handles the helm or engine telegraph either, except when closely alongside the dock. One person on the bridge "has the conn", meaning that person is allowed to give orders to the bridge crew for steering, propulsion, etc. The pilot and Captain typically work together, as the pilot has local knowledge of the harbor, and the Captain has the knowledge of the ship and its handling characteristics. The Captain has the responsibility, but whoever has the conn has the authority. This is just like when the Captain is not on the bridge while underway, the officer of the watch "has the conn" and the authority to handle the ship. Again, many, many pilots "drive" ships they are not familiar with in all sorts of situations. If the Captain feels the pilot is in error, they can discuss it if there is time, or the Captain can relieve the pilot of the conn and assume it himself.

You will notice that in the section of this link devoted to "cruise ship safety", that the USCG can only enforce the SOLAS regulations promulgated by the IMO, and not the stricter regulations that apply to US flag vessels. The US does claim "extraterritorial jurisdiction" for crimes committed against US citizens in international waters (not in foreign countries' territorial waters), but these tend to be criminal charges not civil suits. As part of the "port state control", the USCG can inspect the vessel and determine if one or more of the international conventions have been violated, since the complaints are being made while the ship is in a US port. However, primary jurisdiction resides with the Bahamian Maritime Authority. The USCG may or may not make a report, based on what is found in the inspection, and that would likely be made public, but the USCG Incident website is notoriously slow (months) in updating reports.

Actually, all of this would come from their P&I insurance. No, of course they don't follow OSHA laws, those only apply to the US. I know that epoxy paint, that might be used on the exterior of the ship, can have toxic fumes, but usually when in a confined space. Some specialized coatings use styrene, and these can create extremely toxic fumes, but their use is limited to things like coating potable water tanks. I'm surmising that they painted in proximity to a fresh air intake, and the fumes were carried into the ship's interior. It could also be a case of them using the wrong paint for the situation, and the fumes were again carried into the ship.

And, for the Escape, most of the delays were caused by the difficulty in getting to and getting steel into the places that needed it. For flames to be that high up the funnel, the fire was in the funnel, not down lower like an engine room fire. There is little of a structural nature inside the funnel, which is why they can make them out of fiberglass. I have the feeling that the central portion of the funnel is steel, which is why the damage seems to stop abruptly where the wing attaches to the central funnel.

It wouldn't surprise me that they have the molds for the funnels, even the old ones, stored at Fincantieri.

I was alerted by another poster to come to this thread, I don't have notifications enabled. I've opened this thread twice, so I will try to answer things in order that they were posted, and if it repeats what a later poster stated, so be it. It looks nothing at all like the Triumph fire. The damage is to the fiberglass funnel cover. You will notice that the engine exhaust pipes (steel) are still sticking out. So the fire did not get that hot to melt the steel. Depending on what caused the fire (I'll discuss later), I don't see anything that would prevent the ship from sailing, it looks like just the architectural fairing is damaged, that doesn't even support the exhausts. Looking again, it looks like one exhaust pipe is drooping, and this appears to be a smaller exhaust, so likely either a boiler or incinerator (my guess is boiler), so they likely had an uptake fire in the boiler. Even then, the ship has two boilers, so they can operate with one out for repairs. Soot in the exhausts is a good guess. If the engines are maintained properly, the turbochargers are cleaned every night (the cause of the soot on the aft balconies) by injecting ground walnut shells to "sand blast" the soot off the turbocharger blades, and then the nut shells carry up the exhaust and knock soot buildup off the exhaust and it all goes up the stack. If not done regularly, or properly, it could result in soot buildup. My thought, though, is that there was a leak in the exhaust pipe (there are flanges that connect sections (some are visible on the exhaust pipes sticking out of the damaged wing), and if a gasket at one of those flanges leaked, soot would build up outside the exhaust, but inside the funnel, and a sudden rise in heat of the exhaust gas could have heated the exhaust pipe to the point where the soot ignited. This is not major damage, it is not even structural. No way the ship is out of service for 4-6 months. They likely have spare funnel parts for newbuilds that they can ship over to replace this. Scrapyard? Really? And, as for sailing back, even if they have to go slow, using only the engines that exhaust on the other side, the ship is perfectly safe to sail, even with passengers, the decision to drop off passengers would be a schedule decision, not a safety one. Yes, burning fiberglass gives off toxic fumes. The fire hoses have 150psi at the nozzle, which can give a reach of around 100-150 feet vertically, but that assumes you are aiming at a 45-75* angle. That would require you to be within 50-150 feet of directly under the fire. So, hoses can't reach as far up as you'd think, without some protection for the fire team working directly below the fire. And, there is no fire suppression system in the funnels. As for soot cleaning, if there is no fire, you can climb up inside the funnel, with a hose, and spray from up there, not down on deck. As for whether the ship will cancel future cruises, that I cannot comment on, but from a maritime engineering and safety standpoint, there is little to keep the ship from sailing.

Well, not quite. Again, I don't believe there are "backup generators" anymore. But, when there were, yes, they only fed specific 440/220/110v circuits. And, because they were only going to feed these specific circuits, it was decided this was too complex. You see, further complicating things, the ship is divided into "vertical fire zones", or fire zones that run from the keel to the mast top in a given section of the ship. Generally, there are 5-8 of these spaced along the ship. You can locate the fire zone boundaries by the fire doors in the passageways outside your cabin. The fire doors separate the zones. Now, in order to isolate a fire to a specific zone, the electricity, the ventilation, and the water can be shut off to each zone, without affecting other zones. So, just dealing with electricity, there are 480v, 220v, and 110v switchboards in each fire zone that control the power to that zone, and which can be shut off at the main switchboard. Now, the "Safe Return to Port" regulations of the IMO (applicable to ships built after 2010) requires that loss of one engine room, or one propulsion motor room, not disable either power generation or propulsion completely, so that a ship that has had an engine room fire can return to port under her own power. I don't know the exact layout of the Vista's engine rooms, but I suspect that the three large generators are in one space, and the two small ones in the other, along with other machinery. If there is a fire in one engine room, the power from those generators can be isolated from the switchboard, and the remaining generators can provide power to all services, both propulsion and hotel, but on a limited capacity. So, you could provide all hotel functions, but only get 50% of propulsion power, and maybe only 50% of AC capacity (though there are almost always more AC chillers than needed). Most cruise ships had features of the Safe Return to Port requirements long before they were required. Even the Carnival Splendor and Triumph had two engine rooms, but the unfortunate design flaw was that the power cables from the forward generators ran over top of the aft generators, so a fire in the aft engine room would take out both engine rooms, even though there was no damage in the forward engine room. Most ships also have separate switchboards for each engine room, located in the same fire zone as the engine room it serves (engine rooms are in different fire zones by design), and these two switchboards have a connecting circuit breaker which can be opened to isolate one engine room. Now, in order to have power supplied to all services at all times, even with one engine room isolated, each of the two switchboards can supply power to each zone switchboard (those 440/220/110v circuits in each fire zone), with one supply being energized and one in standby, since the two main switchboards are connected most of the time. Most ships also have the Engine Control Room separate from the two main switchboard rooms, but the Splendor and Triumph not only had both main switchboards in the same room, but ECR in the same room as well. The fire in the aft engine room traveled up the cable ways and made the ECR too hot to remain in, so the ships lost virtually all control of engineering systems. And, the power to speed relationship for a ship is exponential, so the first 50% of speed requires relatively little power, while the last 10% of speed at the top of the range will require 25% or more of the total power.

Not sure what generators you are talking about. There are no "hotel power" and "propulsion power" generators, there are simply generators. All 5 generators supply power to a common "bus" or distribution center (think the land power grid), and the power is taken from there for whatever is needed, whether hotel or propulsion, or engineering (the support systems for the generators). The reason there are large and small generators is so the power capacity can be fine tuned to the power demand, trying to keep the load on the number of generators that are online as high as possible. This article shows a power diagram for cruise ships, the hotel load would be connected at the "440 load" area (with step downs to 220v and 110v): https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.marineinsight.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2021%2F08%2Fbusbar.png&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.marineinsight.com%2Ftech%2Fcruise-ships-powered%2F&tbnid=Mc4dHIehWxLxYM&vet=12ahUKEwj-n4Pnkf33AhX0E1kFHS9pD6kQMygEegUIARDDAQ..i&docid=BWdPn2egshyeRM&w=800&h=450&q=marine power distribution system cruise ship&ved=2ahUKEwj-n4Pnkf33AhX0E1kFHS9pD6kQMygEegUIARDDAQ

Those barges are unpropelled, and unmanned. The tug is on a typical ocean-going "long line" tow, where the catenary (droop) of the tow line acts as a shock absorber when the tug and barge are not on the same wave. The catamaran ship in the OP's post, and the class of transport ships are the same as the "Bimini Superfast" ferry and "The Cat" ferry in Bar Harbor, and the short lived "Hawaii Superferry" (which have been taken over by Military Sealift Command).

That is a Crowley triple deck RO/RO (roll on/roll off) barge used to move containers from the US East Coast to Puerto Rico. It loads semi-trailers, and at each port there are ramps so the tractors can come on the barge, hook up to the trailer, and drive it off.

Newbuild sea trial speeds are carefully done to eliminate the effects of current, but after a repair period, that is not a consideration. Not really. There is a maximum power the azipods can produce, and there is sufficient generator capacity to provide hotel load and full power to the pods. The azipods can use a maximum of 34.5Mw of power, but the generators can produce 63.4Mw of power, or almost twice as much (and hotel load is around 8-10Mw). Besides, even without passengers, you still have the lights on, the AC running throughout the ship, and you are still cooking for the crew. The difference in hotel load between a full load of passengers, and no passengers is about 1-2Mw. The other thing, is that the power to speed relationship is exponential, so the last one or two knots of speed require many times the power of the first two knots of speed. I worked on a tanker that would do 15 knots on a good day, but when we got into the Gulf Stream current, while our "speed through the water" remained 15 knots, our "speed over the ground" jumped as high as 19-20 knots.

I don't believe the temporary generators in containers on deck are there anymore, and I also don't believe they actually installed "back-up generators", since this would require a whole lot of space carved out from ships that are already full. From what I read, they decided that the most cost effective measure was to reroute the power cables from the forward engine room outside the aft engine room, to prevent a repeat of the Splendor and Triumph situations. This has been done on all ships. And, if you thought that the "back-up generators" were going to provide anything but mere survival power, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. But, the problems with the Vista are that they have one generator down for service, which can not cause a power outage like the fires on Splendor and Triumph, but which merely affects top speed.

Since I haven't seen a definitive answer to what the problem is, I don't understand how folks can have any idea whether it can be fixed or not. If you have some information about the problem, please link it for me.

You would be surprised at how little the hotel staff understand about the technical aspects of the ships they live on. Now, any toilet paper used with the "use half a roll at a time" philosophy will cause clogs. Also, wipes (facial, sanitary, diaper) are produced differently than toilet or facial tissue (wipes are designed for strength, toilet paper is not) and will cause clogs almost invariably.

A problem with a diesel generator would affect the total capacity of electricity that could be generated, not any specific areas or equipment. Further, the amount of power for the services you mention would hardly be noticeable in the total capacity, about 1% of the capacity of one generator. Not sure why all these things were out of service. Hot tubs are heated electrically, but most people consider them only "warm" compared to home hot tubs. That is to preclude growth of legionella in the tubs. Hot water for sinks, showers, galleys, laundries, etc, is heated by a boiler, that is diesel fueled.

This is an urban myth. ANY toilet paper is acceptable for use in a ship's vacuum toilet system. What the cruise lines supply is merely the cheapest they can buy.

There is a vast difference between a land based sanitary system and a ship's vacuum toilet system And, if someone else on the same vacuum line as your cabin, maybe 50 cabins away, caused the clog, your toilet won't work. Wherever the clog forms, nothing upstream will work.

Wow. At the easy end, it was a clogged filter in the shower mixing valve, which is a 15 minute repair, or at worst a failed thermostat valve in the mixing valve, and that is a 45-60 minute repair. It ain't rocket science, its just plumbing. Princess must be hard up for engineering staff.

There are most likely at least a half dozen toilet clogs every voyage, from my experience. Depending on how far down the pipe the clog travels, it can knock out many cabins with a single clog. We have roto-rooted out wipes, paper towels, underwear, swim wear, face cloths, hand towels, dinner napkins, bones, toothbrushes, crack pipes, coke spoons, 9mm ammunition, feminine hygiene products and applicators. Typically, your toilet will not overflow unless you keep pushing the flush button. Your toilet is isolated from the vacuum piping by a valve. When you press the flush button, this valve opens, and also a water valve opens to add water to the toilet. If the line is clogged, there won't be any vacuum, so the toilet valve won't open, but what is in the bowl won't go out either. But, there may be enough vacuum to open the water valve, which will just add more and more water until it overflows. If the flush button is pushed, and the toilet does not flush, do not keep pressing the button. When vacuum is restored, the toilet will flush by itself (it "remembers" that you pushed the button). The instances of clogging goes up when there is an outbreak of noro (I'll leave it to you to figure out why there are more underwear clogs), and I could see masks causing massive failures. Clogs can come from crew toilets that affect passenger cabins as well, but these are rare, as the crew know that if we can trace a clog back to their cabin (and after years of doing this, the plumbers are really good at this detective work), they will be fired immediately.

Due to cost constraints of US flag operations, and the desperate need to find new crew, which could result in higher crew costs, I doubt prices will go down. If anything, they will continue to reduce bookings.

As Octantis is new to US operations, it likely has not had its "certificate of compliance" inspection by the USCG, or got it during your time onboard, if there were any US ports, as the ship itself needs the certificate, and the submersibles would be covered under this certificate. This can be done overseas, if the line is willing to pay for the travel and overtime for the USCG inspectors to go abroad. Not sure why there would be regulatory issues in the Caribbean, but I'm sure the Polar Code may have had something to do with working the submersible in Antarctic waters.

Can't say about Canadian regulations, but these submersibles are covered by the Passenger Vessel Safety Act of 1994, and Subchapter T of 46CFR for USCG regulations. Passenger carrying submersibles have been operating in US jurisdiction since 1987. Subchapter T applies to "small passenger vessels", those carrying 6-12 passengers. Any vessel (submersible or not), that carries less than 6 passengers for hire are considered to be "uninspected vessels", and fall under 46 CFR Subchapter C. The 1994 Act initiated the inspection of foreign vessels for compliance to carry passengers in US waters, and this includes the submersibles. The submersibles are considered to be no different from the tender boats on foreign flag cruise ships.

Feminine hygiene products, underwear, swim wear, crack pipes, coke spoons, ammunition, there are no secrets from the engineers.