chengkp75

Royal Caribbean started small scale fuel cell tests in 2016, with progressively larger scale installations on Oasis and Quantum class ships since then, and the largest will be the Icon class ships, which will have a 1 Mw fuel cell installation. But, even so, RCI is behind the curve on new fuel technology. Yes, solar is not practical for marine use, since it is a "low density" generator (requires large volume to generate a fixed amount of electricity), while ships are "high density" (needing to use a small volume to generate the same amount). Why don't the major cruise lines invest heavily in the most advanced technology? Because it costs, a lot, up front. Don't kid yourselves that the mass market lines are looking at fuel technologies like LNG as anything other than a cost saving investment. Why are there no LNG powered cruise ships in the Med, Near East, or Far East? Because the cost differential between LNG and residual fuel is much smaller, or non-existent, in those places, as compared to the US/North America market.

Just to be clear, there is a fire zone boundary between the cabin and the restroom. This means there is a full steel bulkhead (in addition to the walls in the cabin and restroom), along with structural fire protection (insulation), and extra "dead space" between the cabin and the fire bulkhead and the fire bulkhead and the restroom. All of this will moderate noises from the restroom.

An attack on a cruise ship in the canal would block the canal to all traffic, which would have another devastating effect on Egypt's economy, making Egypt into an enemy of Hamas, so why would they do that? Hamas would then be surrounded, and it would likely bring the US actively into the war. Lose lose all around.

Okay, lets get the facts straight here. It has been illegal to dump food waste at sea, unless it has been ground to less than 1/4" for decades. The crew do not sort through the food waste and then dump it overboard. Cruise ships use two systems to treat food waste before it goes overboard: pulpers and biodigesters. Pulpers are industrial sized garbage disposals, that are located at each dishwashing station in the galleys, and are all connected together in a closed system of water flow. The unused food that must be disposed of each night (there are virtually no "leftovers" on a cruise ship, contrary to popular belief) is also sent through a pulper. The drains from the various pulpers flow to a collecting tank where the water is separated from the ground food. The water is pumped back to the pulpers to wash the food into the pulper, and the food waste (with a consistency of oatmeal) is held in the tank. At night the food waste is pumped overboard, below the waterline, so there is nothing to "see". The food waste is commonly called "fish food", but it is discharged at a slow rate, while the ship is moving, so there is no great concentration of food to attract fish. Also, the "oatmeal" dissolves rapidly when pumped into the ocean, so again, large (or even small fish) would have a hard time finding the nutrients and separating them from the water. It would, at best, benefit fish around 4-6" size. Biodigesters are newer for use in treating food waste, but are the same technology that cruise ships have been using for decades to treat sewage before pumping overboard. Bacteria digest the food waste, leaving "gray water", which means it is contaminated water (having waste products from the bacteria in it), which can be pumped overboard. This end product has even less nutrient content than pulper discharge, so even less of an attraction for fish. Another, little mentioned, fact about biodigesters is that they release CO2 as part of the digestion process, so adding to the ship's carbon footprint. Dolphins are attracted to the cruise ships because fish are attracted to the lights shown on the cruise ship, and are disrupted by the passing of the ship, and become food for the dolphins. The food waste put overboard has nothing to do with the attraction of dolphins. The food waste becomes so dilute as to not be a factor.

Since you never provide "proof" when asked for it, I'll ignore that. US shipbuilding has lost its competitive edge many years ago, due to the shortsightedness of keeping the construction subsidy program in place from the Merchant Marine Act of 1936. US shipyards are so inefficient that they don't even wish to compete for repair business, for the most part, but prefer to cater to the US Navy, where timelines are flexible, cost overruns are the buyer's responsibility, and changes can be made over weeks instead of hours or minutes. Even "US built" Jones Act or PVSA vessels typically have 40% or better of their equipment, materials, and structure built in overseas yards and shipped to the US.

I especially like the 4 pages devoted to "sustainable" tourism, when more and more cities around the world are banning large cruise ships. Apparently, the cruise lines are working with the wrong groups in those cities. And, who can forget Carnival Corp's near complete disregard for their environmental stewardship, even in the face of court cases. But, CLIA still spouts environmental stewardship. They tout the fact that all new build ships will have shore power capability, yet they also admit that in the next 5 years, only 3% of cruise ports will support this. And, note that the busiest cruise ports in the world, those in south Florida, are conspicuously absent from their list of current shore power facilities, showing how far behind they are. They brag about 100% of new ships having Advanced Waste Water Treatment systems. Every single NCL ship had these installed by the 2000's. Hardly new technology, why has it taken so long? 88% of new builds that are not LNG capable, are being fitted with exhaust scrubbers. This is another 20 year old technology, why aren't 100% of all new builds being outfitted with this? Are they closed loop scrubbers, or open loop which dump the pollutants into the sea instead of the air? What studies on the effects of open loop scrubbers have CLIA members sponsored? For LNG powered ships, does the CLIA data on GHG reduction apply only to the fuel burned on the ship, or is it using the figure for "life cycle" (wellhead to combustion), which I doubt, as "methane slip" (the amount of raw methane released during the LNG "life cycle") is a known problem, and methane is 200 times more damaging as a GHG than CO2. And what about the debt load the cruise lines have? On another thread, someone asked why Carnival shares are selling so low, when things like this CLIA presentation, and Carnival's quarterly reports are so glowing? Because Carnival is using passenger deposits to pay down their debt, hoping they won't have another situation where they have to refund massive amounts of deposits.

This is correct. If you read the language of 46 USC 55103 (which is the PVSA), it specifically allows for "cruises to nowhere" and calls them out by that name. What has changed is that in order to do a "cruise to nowhere", the crew need H1-B "specialty occupations" work visa, not a C-1/D crew visa. The work visa is more difficult to obtain, and more costly for the cruise line (including the fact that the jobs need to be advertised in the US for US workers, and the wage paid needs to be commensurate with what a US worker would get in the same position), so the cruise lines have voluntarily stopped offering "cruises to nowhere"

And what didn't turn gray, fell out faster. I also tended to develop a twitch whenever the word "Chief" was shouted.

No, just fire hoses. 150 psi water from a 2-1/2" hose will knock most people off their feet, or off a scaling rope.

Even when deployed as a troopship in the Falklands War, the QE2 only had machine guns and shoulder fired SAM missiles.

As noted above, no. There will be over 1000 sub-contractors onboard (the shipyard does not do the renovations of the hotel side of the ship, the cruise line hires sub-contractors to do this, and they live onboard) that will need to be housed and fed by the cabin stewards, galley and restaurant staff. Other staff will be used to clean up daily after the sub-contractors, and to provide "fire watch" for shipyard workers doing cutting and welding around the ship (since the welder cannot watch where the sparks are going, a "fire watch" with an extinguisher is stationed both where the work is being done, and also on the other side of walls, or decks, where things could catch fire). All ship's officers remain onboard, just like the crew. The Captain's job doesn't end when the ship is in dry dock, it gets even more difficult. No. Unlike commercial ships in dry dock, cruise ships have the capability of connecting a hose to a sea water inlet on the hull, and another hose on the sea water outlet, and the shipyard provides sea water for cooling a ship's generator using one of the dry dock pumps. Therefore, all hotel services are maintained throughout the docking, so the walk in fridges and freezers remain in service to feed the crew and sub-contractors. While I believe that Chantiers (where QM2 was built) does do ship repair, many yards specialize in new building only, and don't take ships back for subsequent repairs. Also, the time frame for the ship to dry dock is set by statute, and so the cruise line will look for a shipyard that has a dry dock available at the time needed, and for the requisite length of time needed. Dry docks are limited real estate, and as such are in great demand (remember, dry docks are used by commercial ships as well, and cruise ships only account for about 5% of all the ships in the world), and are typically booked years in advance.

Because they are using customer deposits to pay down debt.

Just to be clear, there are no "backup" generators. The emergency generator is designed to provide power to only those systems that are needed to abandon the ship (the systems I mentioned in my first post). There may or may not be a main generator in standby (one may be down for maintenance, or they may be running them all at the time of the blackout. Typically, when one generator drags the others down and causes a blackout, the other generators are still running, and only need to have the alarm cleared and they will synchronize themselves back on the switchboard, and restore power within minutes.

No, practically all modern ships have one main switchboard that can be separated into two. Each half of the switchboard feeds every single load on the ship (for a cruise ship), but only the breaker from one switchboard is closed at a time. If there is a fault on one half of the switchboard, they can separate the two halves, and power everything from one half switchboard, though only half of the generators and half of the major demands (propulsion, thrusters, AC) will be available. The two switchboard halves are joined together 99.99% of the time. About the only time the two switchboards halves are separated is if there is a fault on the switchboard half, or in the shipyard when they are servicing the switchboard. Even in this situation on the Prima, when the first generator came back on line, it fed both switchboardhalves at the same time. The short duration of total power loss is due to the emergency generator, and the standby main generator being ready to start and supply power.

And, I'll add that this kind of engine failure could happen to any ship at any time, new, or old.

The problem with that is what happens to that 25% of the ship when that engine needs maintenance (and minor maintenance starts at happening every 250 hours)? Ships like the Prima, that have 5 diesel generators, are designed to be able to produce full power to the propulsion, even with one of the diesel generators down for maintenance (this is far more difficult with the ships that only have 4 generators). This is useful, as the engines are required to be torn down for complete overhaul every 12,000 hours (about every 2 years), and this overhaul takes about 3-4 weeks to complete. So, many ships are sailing around with one engine torn down completely, unable to run, for weeks on end, and no passenger notices anything, because either the ship can still make full speed on the remaining generators, or the itinerary has been altered to allow for the maximum speed attainable on the remaining generators. Multiple generators, and they typically represent two different sized generators on any ship, allows for "fine tuning" of the generating plant to meet the electrical demand of the ship. If the ship needs to go full speed, it will run 4-5 generators, if it only needs to go 12 knots to get to the next port in time, they will only run 2-3, and having different capacity generators allows for even more fine tuning to account for things like weather (i.e. sometimes they would run 1 large and 2 small engines, sometimes 2 large and 1 small). Diesel generators are most efficient when operating at 85% capacity, so matching capacity to demand is critical to efficiency.

There really aren't multiple systems. All of the generators, however many are on line together, all connect to one main switchboard (think of your local power grid). Nope. When switching generators, the new one comes online, balances the load with the other generators online, then shifts load from the one to be taken off, to the rest that will remain on, and only then is the one to be taken off line disconnected and stopped. Wouldn't say "all the time", but it is not uncommon. The most likely cause of a total loss of power, what is called a "blackout", would be a stuck fuel pump on one of the diesels that are online. This would limit the load that generator could produce, and likely slow the diesel to the point where it would come off line from safety features, placing too much load on the remaining diesels, which would then disconnect on safeties. An alarm on a running generator will start another generator (they are always on standby), but this will take a minute or two, during which the ship is without power. Now, once the ship's main power is lost, the emergency generator will start, and supply power to limited parts of the ship (steering, navigation equipment, automation, about 1 in 4 lights around the ship, bilge pumps, etc). This takes about 45 seconds to happen, and sometimes the main generator that has been started gets online and generating power before the emergency generator can.

Just to be clear, there are three separate lighting systems in the passageways. There are the normal lights that are on all the time. Some of these "normal" lights are "emergency lights", that are fed from either the main generators, or the emergency generator when the main power fails. These are about 1 in 3 or 4 of the "normal" lights, and are marked with small red dot stickers. Finally, there are the battery lights that will come on if the emergency generator fails, providing minimal lighting. So, there would be very rare scenarios where there are no lights in the passageways.

As I said, the ship may wait, depending on the transit time to the next port, limitations on leaving port (tides, daylight, etc), and how many pax will be involved. It may wait, it may not, varying for just about each situation individually.

This should read "then they may wait". Delaying departure for late guests is not guaranteed, even for cruise line sponsored excursions. However, for ship sponsored excursions that miss the ship's departure, the cruise line will make all arrangements to get you to the next available port of call.

Lets pick this apart. First off, "Crown Princess" does not have gas turbine engines, Coral Princess does. Next, the ship is powered by both gas turbines and diesel electric generators. Then, since the engine rooms of all cruise ships are below the passenger decks, how does making the engine room smaller (and I doubt that), give any more space to the passenger areas? Now, whether or not the additional cabins makes the Island "less space per passenger" is another topic, but these cabins are on deck 10 and higher, and the spaces on the Coral have absolutely nothing to do with the engine rooms.

I'll break my silence on this to debunk this potentially dangerous assumption. The lifeboats are not free swinging in their davits so they could bang against the ship. When stowed, the crew use thick bands to lash the boat securely against the davit. These bands must be released and removed before the boat can be lowered, which is why the crew report to the boats to prepare them, long before passengers are mustered. If you think about it, you would realize that a fiberglass boat repeatedly banging against a heavy steel structure, with large, sharp protrusions, would not have lasted an hour before becoming a pile of junk. The banging you were hearing, and I say this with experience on the Sky in storms, was either the waves slapping against the hull, or the storm valves working. The storm valves are one-way valves that allow the drains from the open decks to drain through the pipes to the sea, but close to prevent seas from coming back up into the drain pipes. This is done with a heavy clapper that is free swinging, and in violent rolling motion, this clapper will slam shut and be heard as high as deck 12 (I know, I've heard it), when the valve is down on deck 2.

I will make this one post, based on my 46 years of seagoing experience, and my several years experience on the Norwegian Sky (sister ship to Sun). First off, the only thing the Captain "has a duty" to inform you of is if there is an emergency. All else is customer relations, and I don't comment on that topic, as it has never been in my wheelhouse. Second, unless you are privy to the NCL SMS (Safety Management System), as required by the IMO's ISM (International Safety Management) Code, and what it says about handling a ship in rough weather, or leaving port in heavy weather, you cannot possibly say whether or not the "Captain blew it and NCL blew it". The Captain has to adhere to the policies and procedures written in the SMS, based on both industry best practices and NCL's corporate history, and these policies and procedures govern virtually every action any NCL employee takes in doing the business of operating a ship. Now, the ISM does also give the Captain "overriding authority" to make decisions that affect the safety of the ship, crew, passengers, cargo, and the environment. This "overriding authority" means that no one, not NCL corporate, not the USCG, not anyone, can countermand the decisions made by the Captain at the time of the incident. Now, if that decision violates the company's SMS policies and procedures, then the Captain will have to justify his/her actions at a later date, but if it is found that he/she followed the SMS to the letter, there is no blame, nor punishment. I am not qualified to judge the Captain's decisions, and there are only about 2 other members of CC that actually have the experience of being Captains, and could make a judgement, if they knew all the facts. Some have questioned leaving port in the first place. As a seasoned Naval sailor has mentioned, the best place to be in a storm is out to sea. In fact, just a couple weeks ago, the USCG ordered ships to leave the Florida ports ahead of a storm, since it was more dangerous to remain in port than to stay. Whether the decision to leave port was the ship's (based on the SMS policies), or the harbormaster's, or the USCG, we don't know at this time, and I guarantee that no one on this forum will ever know. Some have questioned whether the ship could have "sailed away" from the storm. The last option a Captain wants to take in a storm is to put the wind and waves on the stern (i.e. running away from the storm), as the stern of most ships, and cruise ships in particular are more prone to damage from seas than the bow, the bow handles seas better than the blunt stern, and you tend to lose the ability to steer the ship when running with the waves. All of which could have led to a much worse outcome. Some have questioned why other ships stayed in the "Inside Passage", and didn't suffer the same seas as the Sun. Could the Sun have made it to the Inside Passage in time? If not, then the question is moot. Yes, the other ships were heading northbound, while the Sun was southbound, so those ships could simply slow down and stay within the lee in the Passage, where the waves and wind would be less, and the ship still have some room to maneuver. A broken balcony door/window on deck 8 is not "taking on water", as there would only be possible water ingress if a sea reached that deck, and only during the time the sea was there. We don't know whether the glass broke due to a wave impact, or the flexing of the ship. Also, some water leaking through the "weathertight" doors on the promenade deck is not "taking on water". Those doors are not "watertight", and if a wave deposits enough water on the deck to overpower the drains, then some can leak under the doors. "Taking on water" means that something below the waterline has broken, and a continual flooding of water is happening, or that the ship has taken a sufficient list (in the case of the Sun, about 40-45*, so no one would be walking anywhere) that the weathertight doors are continually in the water and leaking. The slamming that the ship underwent was likely unavoidable. The Captain will try to slow the ship down to where the period (frequency) of the waves matches the speed and length of the ship, so the ship rides up one side of the wave and down the other. However, there is a limit to how slow you can go in a storm, as ships don't steer when going slow, so at some point you have to realize that you can't slow any more, and you are going to have to accept some slamming, which is mostly the bow not being able to rise up the front of the wave, but slamming into the wave. The ability to steer in a storm is paramount, as if you take a wave bow on, the sea wants to throw the bow to one side or another, and if the ship cannot steer to counter this turning of the ship in one direction or the other, the next wave will do the same, but turning the ship further, until the ship is "broadside" to the sea, and is now not running up and down the waves, but rolling up one side and down the other, and this is where a ship can become damaged, and truly start "taking on water", and taking on a consistent list, leading to worse flooding. You all can take this post any way you like, these are facts, not opinions, and there are some on this thread who will not be convinced otherwise than NCL placed their lives in danger for some nefarious reason. I would think that everyone who cruises, after the Costa Concordia, would know that the Captain is personally responsible for every passenger and crew life, and decisions like this are not taken lightly, nor for economic reasons.

It's simple triage, or to paraphrase Spock "the good of the many outweighs the good of the few". And, dishes and trays are not a SOLAS violation.

Port Said, the northern exit from the Suez Canal is about 100 miles from the western edge of Gaza. That being said, who would be attacking the Canal? Israel, who depends on a lot of commerce with India (via the canal), and who is not looking to anger their Western allies, nor draw Egypt into the conflict? Or Hamas, who doesn't want to anger their Arab ally Egypt, by disrupting their economy?