chengkp75

And, no one saw this coming?

It's not like painting your house before selling it, it is more like having to do repairs to your car in order to obtain the annual safety sticker. Don't do the repairs, don't get the sticker. Dry docks (not hotel side refurbishments, as a PP noted) are mandatory within a fixed time frame, so when it comes time to dry dock, you have to dry dock, or you will lose your "certificate of class" (that safety sticker), and without that, you lose the ability to enter or leave any port, as the certificate of class must be presented to the port authorities at every port. In general, without a certificate of class, the ship can also lose their "registry" (think of your car's title) from the flag state. So, the only way Princess can avoid the cost of a dry dock prior to selling, is to complete the sale before the dry dock is due.

Bonded means that the cat was played under the Captain's responsibility to not get ashore. Just like a Bonded warehouse. Has nothing to do with the cat's feelings.

The base salary is typically less than the minimum of $658, with the DSC making up the balance. As long as the DSC is not reduced/removed sufficient to bring the salary to less than the $658/month figure, the cruise line does not have to make up the balance. Since a cabin steward has a typical "compensation package" (salary and DSC) of around $1400/month, their salary can vary due to low pax count, or reduced/removed DSC between $1400 - $658/month. This is no fantasy.

Maintenance typically has more access (all crew and pax cabins) than cabin stewards (limited to a section of cabins). When I worked for NCL, we left a notice that maintenance had been there, after the fact. But, the door records all the key swipes, so there is a record of who and when.

You are correct that there is no implied consent for this, there is specified consent in the ticket contract that the cruise line can search your cabin and belongings, both without your notice or approval, or even your presence. You gave them the right to enter your cabin at any time by paying the cruise fare which includes acknowledging the ticket contract.

And, there are alternative muster locations, should the primary one is unavailable. Repetitive drills can address varying scenarios (as the crew does), but when you are trying to drill people who have no training, you stick with the simplest. The fire door before the passenger stairwell, would not be closed unless the fire zones on either side of the door (i.e. where your cabin is, or where the stairwell is) are in the fire zone. While the fire doors are all released together during crew fire drills, when a fire alarm is sounded, the doors at either end of the zone are closed, but the remainder remain open to allow easy access for evacuation. But, yes, if the fire door was closed, then you would use the alternate route through crew areas, if that is required.

I am a firm opponent of the new "e-muster" format. In my professional opinion, it removes the training the crew received in "herding the reluctant cats", in real life, on a weekly basis. It also removes the "muscle memory" training of the passengers in knowing how to find their muster station, when a couple thousand others are trying to do the same. The e-muster is a whole different experience, when you wander on your own to find someone who checks you off, and away you go. Training and drills are supposed to be as close to a real emergency as possible, the e-muster is not.

As the capital of the province, they have the large regional hospital there.

That means that repairs to the dock have been postponed, so that the Panorama can make two calls there, one to remove the stack, and one to replace.

Not sure what you are seeing. No Viking Ocean ship can go further than NOLA. Viking did build a boat similar to their European "longboats", but as I say, the Viking Mississippi was built in Houma, LA, in order to meet PVSA requirements. It is 10,000 gt.

American Cruise Lines' American Melody is 5100 gt.

A typical Mississippi River barge "tow" is 6-7 barges long (about 1200-1400 feet) and 5-6 barges wide (175-210 feet), with one tow boat pushing them along. So, the average river tow is longer than most cruise ships, and have to wind their way around the bends of the river, and under bridges. The barges carry as much freight in one of these "standard" tows as a 6 mile long train.

The "head of navigation" for ships is the I-10 bridge in Baton Rouge, about another 55 miles upriver from St. James. Been to Baton Rouge on a 46,000 dwt tanker, and docked with our bow under the bridge. Cruise ships are limited to New Orleans, due to the height of the I-10 bridge there.

Chouest builds "boats" not "ships". So, building something similar to Viking's longboats is doable, if tremendously more expensive than building one in Germany. But, Viking had no choice in the matter, if they wanted to cruise the Mississippi, they had to build a boat in the US, regardless of cost. The US Maritime Administration, tasked with supporting US flag shipping, did a study a few years back, and found that operating a US flag vessel (that is the daily operating cost, not the cost to build, since you can have a foreign built US flag vessel (but it can't operate in Jones Act or PVSA trades, just international trade)) was 3 times the operating cost of a foreign flag vessel. Of that operating cost, crew cost (wages, benefits, taxes) was nearly 5 times what a foreign flag crew would cost. And, this was for a cargo ship, where there is a crew of about 20, not the hundreds or thousands on a major cruise ship. Further, as the ship would be flagged in the US, the cruise line would have to pay corporate tax on all revenue generated by the ship (cabin fares, excursions, onboard purchases and packages), that are tax free for foreign ships.

I don't know about posts on CC, but a fairly quick search found: 2008: Passenger ship Zenith struck Pax/RORO ship Aegean Pearl 2008: Near miss between Costa Atlantica and car carrier Grand Neptune

It isn't. It is a US built at Chouest's LaShip shipyard in Houma, LA, owned by Chouest, a US offshore vessel corporation and leased to Viking, US flagged and US crewed.

Again, the signal for "general emergency" is not about abandoning ship, nor is a decision to muster passengers a thought towards abandoning ship. There will be a button on the bridge, with a cover, that could be activated by mistake (not by leaning on it), as it is part of the automated whistle system, and a brain fart on the part of a bridge officer could push the wrong button. Ship fire detection systems have "manual call points" (the thing you see in buildings "in case of fire, break glass"), and some systems will not only report this to the fire detection system on the bridge as a fire alarm, it will trigger the general alarm. So, someone breaking the glass on a call point by falling against it, could trigger a general alarm. So could a crew member using a call point to report a fire, rather than the approved reporting system. Nope. They want you gathered for a couple of reasons. To get you out of the way of the emergency teams, and to, as I've said, to know that no one is missing, and perhaps in the area of the emergency (to know that they don't need to search for a victim in a smoky fire). My personal experience, and preference, as the "on-scene commander" on cruise ships (actually directing the emergency response teams to deal with the fire, which is not the Captain's duty) is to muster over not mustering, as it makes the emergency response easier, even if is a small localized fire.

That is correct. It will depend on the specific circumstances whether they will send pax to their cabins for headcount, or whether they will do an actual muster, for a missing person/potential overboard. It also depends on the specific cruise line. But, in any emergency, a pax count is mandatory, and having all pax, who have no duties in an emergency, and really only get in the way, in limited, controlled, and known locations makes dealing with emergencies much easier. In a similar fashion, when that "general alarm" bell sounds, we do a head count of crew, to see if anyone is missing and is perhaps injured in the zone of the emergency.

No, they do not. Under the SAR convention, various nations agree to provide SAR (search and rescue) functions for either their coastal areas or designated areas of the oceans (like the USCG provides this service throughout the Gulf of Mexico). No nation charges for this service. And, to clarify a comment by a previous poster regarding insurance, while I'm not sure if that poster is aware of it, "medical evacuation" insurance does not cover evacuation from the ship. And, no ship will allow a non-governmental agency (who would be the ones to charge for an evacuation) to approach their ship with a helicopter to attempt an evacuation, since they are not trained to do landings (very rare) or lifts from moving ships at sea.

What most cruisers believe is the "abandon ship" signal of "more than 6 short blasts followed by one prolonged blast", is actually the "fire and general emergency" alarm. This is what not only to send passengers to their muster stations, it is to send the balance of the crew to their emergency stations. Typically, there would be a "code" announcement made prior to the general emergency alarm, that would have alerted specific emergency teams to respond, but at that time in the morning, it may have been made in crew areas and public areas only, not in guest cabin areas, since no crew would be working there. For example, on NCL, a "code bravo" call would notify the command team, the bridge team, the fire teams, the quick response tech team, security, and medical to respond to their stations. The remainder of the crew go about their normal routine. When the "general alarm" sounds, then those crew who you saw during the "old style" passenger muster drill (station leaders, stairway monitors, etc), along with the others that you didn't see (deck searching), which represents a large portion of the crew, report to their stations. As noted, the "muster station" signal is sounded when the Captain and the "on-scene commander" decide that the emergency is such that it endangers passengers, and they should be sent to known and controlled locations, and an accountability taken (so that the emergency teams know whether or not they need to search for passengers). As a past "on-scene commander" on cruise ships, if my fire teams know that all passengers are accounted for, and don't have to spend time searching for passengers, then it becomes far easier to attend to the emergency. There are many cases, including the infamous Star Princess fire, where the passengers were called to muster, while a very serious emergency was dealt with, where there was literally no thought given to evacuating the ship. "The ship is the best lifeboat". The "muster signal", and the passenger muster are for accountability, not really about getting into lifeboats. For every 200 true musters in emergencies, perhaps one results in actually loading boats

Again, this is not correct. A foreign flag cruise ship, with foreign crew, and foreign owned, could do a "cruise to nowhere" (which by definition is a "closed loop"), and this is specifically called out in the USC (as part of the PVSA) as being allowed. What has changed is the CBP ruling that foreign crew on a foreign flag ship doing a cruise to nowhere would need a work visa, not a crew visa, as I stated in my previous post. The cost of getting work visas for the entire crew, for the occasional "cruise to nowhere" is not financially sound for the cruise lines, so they don't offer them anymore.

The federal government warned the NYPD about 10 years ago, that a claim about profiling based on "red hair" would fall afoul of federal law, since it can be argued that red heads occur more in England and Ireland (about 13%), than other places in the world (Asia, Africa, South America), so could be argued as discrimination due to ethnic origin.

Since you pick on fallacies, let me just point out that it wasn't Carnival's lawsuit, it was NCL (in Specter v NCL), where the SCOTUS affirmed that some, but not all aspects of the ADA apply to foreign flag cruise ships.

The total repair would be whatever time is needed in Victoria, at least a week, then transit back to Portland, 7-8 days for dry dock, then transit back to Victoria, another week to repair the funnel, then transit back to LA/LB.