chengkp75

Since methanol is a liquid at ambient temperatures and pressures, the tankage problems of LNG are avoided. But, since methanol is a "low flash point" (flash point is the temperature where the fuel gives off enough vapor to be able to be ignited by a spark source) fuel, it has some of the same safety and design considerations as LNG. And, just like LNG, it will not ignite in a diesel (compression ignition) engine by itself, and needs a "cetane boost". For LNG engines, this means the engine needs at least 5% diesel mixed with the LNG to get the fuel to ignite in the engine. Not sure how much methanol would need, but likely similar. Methanol also has a very low viscosity, and engine system designs use the viscosity of the fuel to lubricate the moving parts of the fuel system, so methanol's low viscosity leads to other problems/design needs. While doable, it would still be costly to adapt older engines and engine rooms to meet the needs of a dual fuel methanol/diesel fuel, so it is not likely to happen. You would be literally tearing the entire engine spaces of the ship apart to remove old systems and install new systems.

Retro-fitting a ship for LNG is nearly impossible, economically. Conventional fuel tanks are just metal boxes with one or more sides being the hull. LNG tanks have to be in certain locations, like not being on the sides of the ship, or on the bottom near the sides, where conventional fuel tanks are located. Also, LNG tanks have to be cryogenic vessels (think of a vacuum coffee flask) that have a void tank around the LNG tank, and then there is the inerting equipment (places a non-explosive atmosphere above the LNG in the tank), the re-liquifaction equipment (takes the normal "boil-off" of LNG to methane and if not needed by the engines, cools it again to cryogenic liquid and pumps it back into the tanks.

Size has absolutely nothing to do with whether a ship can use LNG or not. Many Norwegian ferries use LNG. The deciding factor is ship's range, or how far it can go on the amount of fuel it can load, and the available infrastructure to refuel it in various ports.

As twangster says, overhauling an older ship just gets you a new looking old ship. The reason that cruise lines get rid of ships over about 20 years old, is that the hull requires massive amounts of testing (ultrasonic thickness testing of steel plates and frames)(x-ray inspection of welds) that lead to required replacement of steel throughout the ship (hull plating, frames, tanks, piping). So, the maintenance costs are higher for the older ship over the brand new ship. Maintenance cost for a ship, versus the age of the ship is an exponential relationship. It has been found that at the 15 year age, the cost of maintaining a ship starts to skyrocket, compared to just a couple of years before. Another consideration is that the ship is built with enough crew cabins for the crew envisioned for how the ship is configured at new build. If new venues, or attractions are added that require additional crew to man these venues and attractions, then they have to take crew away from existing duties. This is why you don't see all the new "bells and whistles" retrofitted to older ships, there ain't enough crew to go around.

Google translate seems to work fine here. It just says that it is confirmed that "work" is being done on the new class. This is planning, not any shipyard work. It says the ships won't likely be built until the 2020's.

All water on ships have chlorine in it. When it is made onboard, either by reverse osmosis or by distillation (which is the most common method), it is chlorinated before it goes into the storage tanks. Water taken from shore also gets chlorine, at the same level, as the water made onboard, before it goes into the tanks. Then, when the water is circulated from the tanks around the ship, more chlorine is added. Water taken from shore has to jump through more hoops than water made onboard, including being isolated from use for 24 hours until a coliform bacteria test comes back negative. So, this delay in being able to use, along with the cost, means that shore water is only taken when the ship does not have enough time at sea to make enough onboard. The water onboard will have calcium carbonate dissolved in it to neutralize the slight acidity of distilled water, so the CPAP, over time will build up a calcium scale.

Since you will be disembarking in the UK, that requires a UK visitor's visa.

No, they do not. Not sure how many times I can say this. Not sure where you got this information. No charger, for anything, whether cell phone, camera, laptop, whatever, built in the last 20+ years has had a "transformer", but a SMPS power supply. Have you taken a cell phone charger apart, to find a transformer? Do you work with electronics or power supplies?

That means she needs to leave Portland Monday morning, so to allow for some sea trials of the repaired pods, they would likely need to get her off the blocks and out of the dock this evening. And, the estimates put into Marinetraffic via the AIS system, is manually entered by the navigating officer on the ship, and is frequently a "place holder" when waiting on more detailed information. Not saying it isn't correct, but it is an estimate.

A cell phone charger uses SMPS (Switch Mode Power Supply) rather than a transformer to step down voltage. Instead of a coil of wire wrapped around an iron core, it uses semiconductors to switch on and off to drop the voltage (this is what "steps the voltage down to a low-voltage high-frequency AC, not a "transformer"). A transformer cannot change the frequency of current. This form of power supply is about 96% efficient, while conventional transformers waste energy in the form of heat, If you used a conventional transformer to step power from 220v to 5v, it would get very warm, if not hot, to the touch (and this is why transformers, but not SMPS units like cell phone chargers, "wall wart" USB ports, or multi-USB ports are not).

OP, you seem to want the new iPhones to be banned. Is that the case? Otherwise, why do you keep asking why NCL doesn't ban them?

Sorry, no, no views under the "business end" of the ship.

What do you mean by "what happens"? What happens to the manifest? A manifest is submitted at each port for both arrival and departure. If there is a change in the manifest due to someone leaving or arriving at that port, or even dying, a new manifest is prepared and submitted. What happens to the person who left the ship? That depends on how they did it. If done with approval from the cruise line (meaning that customs and immigration were notified to clear the passenger), then nothing will happen to the person. If they just walked off and didn't return, then the person will need to deal with customs and immigration in the country they left the ship in, when they go to leave the country and there is no record of their entering the country.

The ship never has "an incorrect manifest". The manifest is submitted at departure, so they will know who is onboard and who is not.

I've never heard of one having problems before. As I said earlier, the only azimuthing problem I've heard of was burning out the clutches (not brakes as I stated before) on the Anthem. Ship building is still a lot more art than science, and I've observed different vibration problems caused by harmonics on several ships that are "identical", resulting in different remedies on different ships. The harmonics of a hull can vary between "sister" ships just because of the temperature in the shipyard when sections are welded together, or the very slight variations in steel thickness between batches of plating.

It still surprises me that this bearing is overheating. Given that it does support the weight of the pod, and transmits the propulsive force from the pod to the hull, and this is quite a load, but the bearing is designed for this. What a redesigned propeller would do is trade a little more "pitch" (the distance the propeller (a screw) advances in one revolution) for a little less rpm. Rpm times pitch is the speed of the ship. So, changing the rpm changes the frequency of the wave pulses from the propeller tips to the hull, which could get that vibration outside the natural frequency of the hull, and alleviate the vibration. A redesigned propeller, that exchanges pitch for speed, would not effect efficiency to any real extent. The pods hang the propellers far enough below the hull that the effect of blade passage close to the hull causing vibrations is minimized. I would think that if vibration was so extensive to cause a very low rotational speed bearing to overheat, that it would be widely felt in the after areas of the ship, resulting in passenger complaints. I'm a bit more inclined to think that there is a control issue here, where the bridge officers have set steering parameters such that the pods swing back and forth more than needed to maintain course. I know that the QM2 had to go back into dry dock when first built, because they found that the 4 azipods could not keep the ship on a steady course with following seas, so they added a "skeg" or extended keel in front of and between the inner two pods to create some hydrodynamic stability.

Who is going to do this background check? Unfortunately, the police services in the crew's native countries (where their records are kept) are generally not as professional or thorough as in the US. How much crime goes unreported in these countries? How many people in these countries get fingerprinted? When NCL asked Congress for an exemption to allow non-resident aliens to get US merchant mariner documents to work on their US cruise ship, the USCG objected vehemently to this, as every US merchant mariner gets an FBI background check before they can get credentials. While I have worked with international cruise ship crews, and have a lot of respect for a lot of them, when you get on a cruise ship under a flag of convenience, you leave a lot of "safeguards" and "rights" and "protections" that US citizens come to expect as their due, at the foot of the gangway.

This is interesting, if accurate, as this is the first time I've heard of an azimuth bearing failing, in all the years that azipods have been around, even when subjected to extreme stress from storms like the Anthem of the Seas a couple years ago, where they burned out the azimuth brakes due to fighting the storm. While they possibly could redesign the azipod for internal replacement of the bearing, since the bearings have not been known to fail all that much, I would be surprised if that modification was already available, and if not, then it would take a year or so to come up with a new design. I am surprised that there were two azimuth bearing failures (or at least overheating), especially on the same ship, as this bearing does not rotate much, and at low speed, though if they are talking about vibration causing the overheating, this could be a design flaw in the Vista class ships, where the harmonics of the propellers turning at normal cruising speed, are in harmony with the natural frequency of the hull, causing excess vibration. There may need to be other modifications done to the ship at the next drydock to dampen the vibration, and I think this may actually be what will happen, rather than a redesigned azimuth bearing. This bearing is in the size of about 10 feet in diameter, and therefore even internal replacement would require cutting a large hole in the side of the ship to bring the new bearing in and the old out. My guess at modifications would be either structural strengthening around the azipods to change the natural frequency, or a different propeller to again change the speed the propeller needs to turn for cruising speed, or both. Panorama already has the newer XO type azipod, which allows replacement of the more commonly failed thrust bearing from inside the pod, so I had my suspicions about the azimuthing system when they needed to dry dock, though it could have been something else. Now that I think about it, I don't see how they could redesign the azipod to renew the azimuth bearing without dropping the pod off the ship (which is what they will be doing now), as this bearing is the only support holding the pod into the ship. Apologies if this has gotten a little technical.

No, even in the US, a receptacle within 3 feet of a source of water needs to have a GFCI outlet or circuit breaker to alleviate the danger of shock. Cruise ships don't use GFCI's, they use "shaver outlets" as described below. I'm surprised that Virgin has outlets in the bathrooms. Most ships have "shaver only" outlets that are limited to 40 milliamps, or about 4 watts (things like shavers, water picks, etc). If you overload this outlet, it will blow the fuse, and need to have maintenance come to renew the fuse.

Again, don't want to be debbie downer, but those pictures worry me a little. I don't see the scaffolding being set up that would be normal for a typical bearing/seal replacement problem. The first picture shows what looks like a dock arm pressure washing the area around the azimuthing (pod rotation) seal area of the port pod, and the second picture shows what looks like oil dripping from the same azimuth seal on the starboard pod. This could be more serious than originally thought, or it could just be early into the repair. Where are these pictures posted? Hopefully we get some more, and I can try to remote guess what is going on. Tomorrow should be an important day for clues.

This is the usual way, even for those ships with helipads on the bow. It is far easier for the pilot to keep station above the uppermost deck than to have a moving "wall" (the forward facing cabins and bridge) moving towards them.

Nope. Fincantieri did not build the azipods, nor were they the ones who specified that azipods be used. Carnival agreed to use azipods. ABB builds the azipods. Now, we come back to the never ending question, that no one here can answer: are they recurring bouts of propulsion issues, or are they different issues each time? Folks on CC tend to lump "propulsion issues" into a single entity, while it is like saying that because your car has brake issues one year, and suspension issues the next, and finally needs some engine work, that your car has "car issues". This could be something like having fishing gear (drift nets, gill nets) wrapped around the propeller shaft, damaging the seal, and this would not have been Carnival's, ABB's, nor Fincantieri's fault. The Pride of America wrapped a buoy wire around one of their azipod shafts a few years ago, and dragged it and the buoy all the way to the next island. Fortunately, that did not damage the oil seal, so it was just cutting it loose that fixed it, done at the dock. But, if the seal is damaged, and they were going to be leaking oil to the sea, they would have pumped out the oil, let the sea water in knowing it would damage the bearings, and then have to replace the bearings.

Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but the Columbia River bar pilots have Panorama scheduled for sailing out on Dec 31st, but that is an estimate, and likely a place holder. Unless there is something (parts) that Carnival is waiting on (and they wouldn't have gone up on the dock just to sit and wait on parts (very expensive)), I can't see the repairs taking more than a week, then a day to Victoria, 2-3 days to reinstall the funnel, and 3 days down to Long Beach. So, my estimate would be leaving Victoria for Long Beach around the 15th. They will likely slow steam to Long Beach to save fuel, so maybe taking 4-5 days down. Of course, when a ship goes up on the blocks, lots of things can be found, and things can go sideways in a hurry, so there may be delays.

That actually looks like an MH-60 Jayhawk, which has a range of 800 nm. The USCG has about 100 Dolphins, and about 40 Jayhawks. The Dolphin is faster, but with a shorter range. A helicopter with a 250 nm range would not be of much use in maritime SAR, where the distances and flight times are enormous.

I believe that some USCG fixed-wing aircraft, like the C-130, are configured for aerial refueling, but none of their helicopters are.