chengkp75

Are the ships having problems every month? Are the other cruise lines not having azipod problems? Maybe not at this moment, but other lines have had major failures, some in clusters, over the years. And the Spirit class ships have slightly higher power azipods than the Panorama. As far as transparency, does Amtrak notify people of the exact cause of delays or rescheduling due to mechanical issues? Do the airlines? Does any transportation company? Why should the cruise lines be any different?

Here is the page on US taxes from CCl's 2022 annual report. US Annual Report - Final PDF.pdf Notice that it mentions, as it does every year, that Section 883 of the IRS Code exempts all revenue generated by a foreign flag vessel from US federal income tax. It states that the only US income tax they pay is on the land hotel and transportation services of HAL's Alaska operations. The next page, which I have not copied lists their income liabilities to UK, Australia, Italy, and Germany, in the form of "tonnage tax". Those are the only taxations mentioned. CLIA freely admits that the bulk of taxes paid by its member cruise lines in the US are for local property taxes, and Social Security taxes for US land employees.

Let's first ask a few questions about the information that is out there, before jumping to conclusions about what has happened. First off, is it confirmed that the ship can only make 10 knots, or is it that the ship is proceeding at that speed to match the itinerary? Big difference in what may or may not be the actual failure. Next, are there two wakes behind the ship, or just one? Another big difference in what may or may not be the actual failure. From what I've read in this thread, Carnival has not said there is a propulsion problem causing a reduction in ship's speed. This could very well not be an azipod issue, but having one or more diesel generators out of service limiting the power available to the azipods for propulsion. This seems to be a growing problem over the last year, for all cruise lines, where one engine is taken down for overhaul, parts shortages cause delays in completing the overhaul, and another engine goes down for repair or maintenance. As for "redesigning" azipods, lets get real here. First off, just because your car has to go in for repairs to the brakes one month, and then for replacement of a fan belt the next month, does not mean you have a repetitive failure, but the car is still out of service. Without knowing what may have possibly failed on an azipod, no one knows whether this is a repetitive failure or not. Secondly, the azipods on the Panorama are not the largest azipods built, they are about 80% the size of the azipods on the Oasis class, and other, ships, so design has gone beyond the Panorama. And "known" problems. Does anyone here know what the problem is? Does your car have "known" problems if it needs repair for various different reasons? As for why there are limitations on some sailings and not others? Are you looking at the same itineraries, or do different itineraries have limitations on speed, and some do not? That can be from the planned speed based on the itinerary. Ships don't go full speed all the time between ports. Depending on the distance between ports, and the planned arrival and departure times, they may have to go fast, or may be able to go slow. If the itinerary is designed for slow sailing, then there isn't any limitation. If the itinerary requires higher speeds, then if the ship cannot produce those speeds, there will be a change in itinerary.

Sounds like you should share your market demographic knowledge with all these cruise lines to show them the error of their ways.

Regardless of what the intermediate or long term life of Grandeur is with RCI, if she is scheduled for dry dock in March, then in order to sail at all after March, she has to have the dry dock. If a ship misses the statutory dry dock intervals, she loses her "certificate of class" (think of your car's state inspection tag), and loses insurance coverage. So, even if RCI were to find a buyer for Grandeur in February, unless the deal closed before the end of March, the buyer would require RCI to dry dock the ship before the sale finalizes, in order to keep the certificates valid. The only way to avoid the dry dock cost is to sell before the required docking date.

Again, ace, facts matter, and reading comprehension matters. You are the only one who has mentioned emissions regarding cruise ships, and there are no "more stringent" emissions requirements (New Zealand has within the last couple of years adopted the "world wide" emissions standards that ships must meet everywhere else in the world, so no compliance problems are created). The environmental requirements that may have caused the ships to leave the Oz/NZ market are those dealing with biofouling of the hull (i.e. the need to clean the hull prior to entering territorial waters), not emissions.

Just note that the closer to the transit date that a ship cancels the booking, the more penalty is paid. The cruise line has to put a deposit down when making an advance reservation, so they stand to lose a lot of money for a last minute cancellation.

See the linked page from the Canal Authorities rules and regulations regarding the transit reservation system, which has a "special period" for requesting transit dates for "passenger vessels", from 760 to 366 days prior. Nope, wasn't hard, didn't rely on "articles", went to the ACP itself. Straight from the horse's mouth is always best. It further states that the first seven slots out of the total allocated slots for a given day (when the day's totals were 31) would be allocated strictly to passenger vessels, when the "special period" opened. Dec 2020.pdf

And I am also fully aware that under laboratory conditions, the investigators were not able to reconstruct the fire using a towel from Princess and a smoldering cigarette. The major outcome of this fire was that all cruise ships were required to outfit the balconies with fire retardant dividers, furniture, and flooring.

That's the way I take it. Yes, there are health issues with smoking. Yes, there are objectionable smells from smoking. But, in my professional opinion, smoking on a ship's balcony is no more dangerous than smoking anywhere else on the planet.

As Ruth says, no. Some water is made from sea water in evaporators, that produce distilled water. Some is made by Reverse Osmosis (RO) water makers that produce drinking water quality water from sea water, but it is not pure enough to be considered "distilled" water (it has a maximum of 20ppm total dissolved solids in it). This water, especially the water from evaporators, is slightly acidic, which can cause corrosion in the ship's piping system (as well as not being healthy to drink in large quantities), so calcium carbonate (the antacid ingredient in Tums) is added to the water to neutralize it. So, there will always be a small mineral content in the water. And, as Ruth says, some itineraries do not allow enough time at sea (port intensive), or enough speed while at sea (more speed, more diesel engines running, more waste heat to make water) to make all the water needed for the cruise, so the ship will bunker water from shore. You can see when they do this, there will be fire hoses with blue bands on them, running from the dock to the ship. Water from all three sources tends to get mingled together in the ship's system, so you never really have water from just one source.

Call BS all you want. Until you have participated in the organization and operation of an abandonment drill or actual emergency, you don't know what would go on. I have, and do. And, unlike the hollywood interpretations of ships sinking, it does not happen immediately. And, with the notable exception of the Costa Concordia, where leadership failed utterly, the muster would be announced long before people needed to go to boats. Even the Concordia, which is considered to be the absolute worst case scenario of damage to the ship, with 5 watertight compartments flooding, it still took over an hour for the ship to reground on Giglio and heel over (which was caused by the regrounding, not the flooding). Forensic analysis shows that if the ship had not drifted back to Giglio, it would have remained afloat longer, and would not have rolled over, but sunk upright, slightly down by the stern. There are alternative muster stations set up in the ship's emergency plans. There was a muster of passengers on an RCI ship a few months ago, for a man overboard situation. People onboard reported that it was chaotic (even though it was announced that this was for a man overboard, not a fire or sinking) because people did not remember what deck their muster station was, and the excuse was "well, it was 7 days ago that they showed us where it was". Also, crew, having lost the training of actually herding thousands of passengers at one time to their stations, did not react well. There are numerous examples of emergencies where the passengers were mustered after having the old "in person" muster drill, that went off smoothly. The kinds of comments about instances like the RCI muster, shows that the e-muster has removed training from the drill in favor of "the passenger experience" (i.e. comfort).

What they mean is not that the ship couldn't traverse the locks, as not getting one of the assigned slots. But, as I said above, the ships with reservations will get the priority.

Nope. As noted in articles from the Canal Authority, ships with reservations will get priority over other ships, and cruise ships always make reservations up to 2 years in advance. The reservation fee, and the fee for a guaranteed daylight passage that all cruise ships book, generate a whole lot of additional revenue for the Canal Authority.

Not entirely accurate. To make a reasonable comparison, you would need the ship's GT (which is volume), displacement (weight, and rarely common knowledge), length, beam, and draft. Ships with a larger GT tend to have much more "sail area" (size of the ship exposed to wind) than a ship with a smaller GT, making the larger ship more susceptible to wind heel. The other dimensions relate to how the hull reacts to seas and swells. Even more important is the environmental conditions at the moment: what direction is the ship heading in relation to both the seas and the swells, what is the height of the seas and swells, what is the period of the seas and swells, what is the ship's speed. There can be no real comparison of how different ships "handle seas" until they are in the exact same location, at the exact same moment, travelling the same direction at the same speed.

This is not correct, and shows how misunderstood the purpose of the muster is, and why the "new" muster procedure is not adequate to meeting the safety needs of the passengers. This also is not correct. The muster of passengers, whether for a drill, or in an actual emergency, is not about getting into lifeboats and abandoning the ship. It is about accounting for every passenger in an emergency situation that may never escalate to abandoning the ship, nor even a situation where abandoning would be considered (like a man overboard situation). So, it is of utmost importance in an actual emergency to have everyone counted (by card if that is the procedure used onboard), and in a known location (their proper muster location so they are checked in properly). This allows the emergency teams to either concentrate on the emergency if all passengers are accounted for, or to search certain areas for passengers known to be missing. Passenger muster would be called long before an emergency got to the point where the Captain decides to abandon ship. Just look at the Star Princess fire, or other more recent fires like Grandeur of the Seas, where passengers were mustered for accountability, but where there was no consideration of abandoning ship, even though the emergency took hours to resolve. And, even if you were to go directly from your muster station to a lifeboat, don't you think it would be important for the Captain to know that everyone has been accounted for, and no one is being left behind? The only way that can be done is by an accurate muster count. I have handled maritime emergencies for decades, aboard all kinds of ships, including cruise ships, and know the importance of an accurate "head count", even with a small crew of 20 or so, let alone thousands of untrained passengers.

During WW2, most ships were steam turbines, or reciprocating steam engines. After the war, when the world was rebuilding their merchant fleets, most European companies switched to diesel engines, as they are far more fuel efficient but more labor intensive, and fuel was expensive in Europe, and labor was cheap. The US retained steamships up until the 70's because fuel was cheap and labor was expensive. After the oil embargo in the 70's, the US started to switch to diesels as well, since fuel costs had skyrocketed.

Susan Gibbs talks about preserving the "ship's history". Her "artistic" history in her interior has long been stripped to bare steel, so that is gone. Her "maritime" history is her power plant, but I seriously doubt anything will be done to restore that, so that is gone. All you have left is an iconic profile, and as much of an advocate of the US merchant marine as I am, I don't really see much value in that, and it will only lead to maintenance debacles like the Queen Mary and the battleship Texas.

They burn the natural "boil off" from the cargo, so are not really concerned with energy efficiency, so a steam plant is preferred due to its low maintenance costs, and ease of burning LNG in the boilers.

Yeah, we can ban all laundry, guests get towels and sheets once a cruise, and all food will be microwaved.

Another factor against "closing down" Alaska, is that it is within the North American ECA, which mandates use of 0.1% sulfur diesel fuel, and not the 0.5% sulfur residual fuel that can be used outside the ECA (200 nm from coast of North America), so that is a 80% reduction in emissions right there, let alone the worldwide reduction in fuel sulfur content from 3.5% to 0.5% in 2020 (an 86% reduction in emissions worldwide).

There are two types of tidal power generators. "Tidal barrage" type plants use a hydro-dam to retain high water on one side or the other of the dam, and then use that "potential energy" from the height difference to generate power in the turbine. This tends to extend the tidal periods behind the dam to much longer into the 12 hour tidal cycle. "Tidal turbines" are similar to wind turbines, but the blades are underwater, and use the "kinetic energy" of the water flowing with the tides to generate power. While the water flow does slow during the ends of the tidal cycle, it almost never truly stops. Tidal turbines can be used in places that don't have extreme tides (like Anchorage), such as rivers. Due to water's relative density to air, tidal turbines can generate many more times the power per square foot as wind. The problem with tidal power is the initial cost.

Since she was a steamship (hence the SS designation), that was most likely lighting off a boiler, which almost invariably involved incomplete combustion. One of many reasons there are very few steam ships around anymore (mainly just LNG tankers).

I don't know for sure whether expanding hydropower would be economically feasible or not, but BC gets about 85+% of its power from hydro. Tidal power in Alaska is also viable, due to their extreme tides.

Again, facts matter. Remember, that when in port, QE will use about 8 Mw of power (simply the hotel load), or about 64Mw-h for the entire port stay. Do you think they continue to run all the engines while at the dock, just to burn up more fuel? And, how do they get rid of the excess power, since the generators will only generate (burn enough fuel) to match the usage (8Mw)? Juneau uses around 600-1000Mw-h per day. Alaska gets about 33% of its power from renewable sources.