chengkp75

This is not correct. Evaporated water (a common method for making fresh water) runs at around 0-1ppm sodium, and RO water is around 20ppm sodium, which is less than most municipal water. Either system will divert the water produced back to sea if the alarm levels are exceeded, so the process is not "imperfect".

A USPH is merely a snapshot of the ship at the time of the inspection, but if you've trained under USPH you recognize when a problem is shipwide. Most of the violations are not in the passenger areas,so likely not visible to you on a cruise. It is the responsibility of far more than the "executive chef" to deal with these violations.

Most USPH inspectors are former local health inspectors and will tell you that VSP regulations are far stricter than local health regulations.

Actually, they don't. They sign a contract that stipulates that they will receive compensation that is a combination of fixed salary (very low) and DSC contributions. They acknowledge that the DSC portion of their compensation is variable, based on performance. The fixed salary is typically around $10-20/day, the vast bulk of their compensation coming from DSC. The typical compensation for a cabin steward is in the $1400/month range, and the only thing guaranteed is that they will make the minimum wage allowed for all seafarers, $658/month. If all DSC was removed by the passengers, and the fixed salary did not meet the $658 figure, that is the only time the cruise line has to step in and make up the balance to $658/month. That's my one and done for this tip thread.

Really surprised about the sink, since the Jade was built as US flag (Pride of Hawaii), and therefore had to be fully ADA compliant.

Yes, your "regular" drivers license will be accepted. Real ID compliance has been pushed back until 2025, I believe. Just know that even with a Real ID license, you will still need your birth certificate. Only Enhanced licenses from 5 northern border states remove the need for a birth certificate.

The USPH VSP is not all that different from the EU's ShipSan program, though enforcement is unified in the US, whereas the EU requires each member state to enforce it within their borders, and no central record keeping. This is just a culture of disregard for public health on MSC's part.

Yep, as the OP is from South Carolina, they don't have an enhanced license (which has a US flag somewhere on it), but a real id license (that has a star). Only Vermont, New York, Michigan, Minnesota, and Washington issue enhanced drivers license.

Normally, a corrective action report is not filed for several weeks afterwards, after all department heads have responded, and corporate compliance and corporate legal have vetted it. This is not the case, and the reason that the same violation is reported multiple times is that they fall under several "item numbers", which relate to various sections of the VSP, so one finding can violate several regulations, and needs to be reported in each, so that as you say later, the number of violations for each section can be determined, and the severity of the "cultural" infraction can be weighed. I have been through many USPH inspections, and unlike you, I don't see any pettiness or vindictive reports of violations anywhere in the report. If the ship is intended to be used in the US market at any time in its life, it must meet the USPH construction regulations (a whole separate manual from the VSP operations manual), and the depth marker is part of that. If the ship has not had a USPH construction survey at new build, it will have one before it is allowed to sail to US ports, so again, the marker would have been there. Since it is not there now, it means that it was painted over. While minor, it is a violation, but it does not get the same weight of score as the food found out of temperature. Typically, when the corrective action report is posted, it contains all the same verbiage as the inspection report, but with the actual points taken for each violation noted, so you may get to see what I mean. There are many cases where a violation like this pool marking is noted as a violation, and yet zero points are taken away on the inspection score. Frankly, what I see is a lack of "USPH culture" onboard, where the crew are trained so that whatever they need to do to meet the regulations becomes second nature to them, part of their everyday work routine, and does not require conscious thought. This is a failure of all departments, and many supervisors. One poster said they thought the head chef was responsible for the entire galley, but in an operation the size of a cruise ship, this is not possible. The way that NCL assigns responsibility is that the Staff Captain is in overall charge of meeting USPH regulations. Then, the Hotel Manager, Chief Engineer, and Staff Chief Engineer supervise their various departments and supervisors to ensure the regulations are met. This includes the engineering department for potable water management, lighting, and ventilation throughout the ship, the Staff Chief's hotel maintenance department for maintaining all the galley and laundry equipment (dishwashers, leaks, etc), the Head Housekeeper for the cabins and pantries, the Executive chef for food safety procedures, the Sanitation Supervisor for operation and cleaning of dishes and cleaning the galley areas, the Medical staff for the Medical Center, the Youth staff for the kid's center, the Environmental Officer for the garbage and recycling areas, and so on. We would have weekly inspections by 30 or so supervisors, of the entire ship, to look for USPH violations. We would be in teams of one supervisor from the area being inspected (like a chef in a galley), and one supervisor from another department (like the laundry supervisor with that chef) to provide "outside eyes" to see things that the everyday user goes "blind" to. Only when the supervisors and crew are all following the regulations every single minute of every single day, will a ship score highly on a repeated basis.

I and my engineers have fished underwear, swimwear, hand towels, dinner napkins (cloth), feminine hygiene products and their applicators, wipes of all kinds, food, toothbrushes, crack pipes, coke spoons, and even 9mm ammunition out of the lines. Unlike a land sanitary system where the lines get bigger the more drains are connected, the vacuum lines are the same size from the top of the ship to the bottom, regardless of how many toilets are connected. Also, in some cases, on some ships, the sanitary lines actually go up from the toilets. On older ships, the pipes can become constricted from scale formed by urine, but most ships treat this by dropping dissolvable bags of citric acid in the toilets weekly. But, even with semi-constricted pipes, normal "product" and toilet tissue will flush without clogging. Think of your vacuum cleaner, it has a hard time picking up a large quantity of small items unless you force the end down flat to seal the end and maximize the vacuum. Just like that, in order to move "product" along the vacuum pipes, the "product" needs to "hold together" and form a "plug" to maximize the vacuum to move it along. If things broke down too readily (the toilet paper dissolving), it would lose it's cohesiveness and not move properly down the pipes. Apologize for the graphics.

However, it is a fairly common happening (the brown water), and I know this from personal experience.

I'll admit that I've never heard of having to lock the door to get the AC to switch on, but I understand it. It beats the "hack" of placing a magnet over the door switch when the system is just having to keep the door closed to get the AC on. Here there is a switch inside the door jamb that activates when the latch goes into the locked position. Good improvement.

It's not necessarily the weather outside the port, but the wind speed and direction that affect a large ship while in the confined channel when inside the port. Looking at photos of the Gdansk cruise terminal, it appears the major port area is all low lying (no wind breaks), and only protected by a small breakwater, so navigating the turns to get to the dock with the wind pushing the ship away could be beyond what the port authorities allow.

Well, its two days to Freeport from NOLA at 18 knots. So, two days either way leaves only three days for dry dock, and it takes a minimum of half a day to get on and off the blocks, so you're down to two days of dry dock time, and a total "bottom survey" including all the machinery takes a minimum of 7-10 days, so no, it wouldn't work.

Oh, I guess that multi-million dollar investment is just sitting around waiting on a job. Let alone where she completed her last job prior to Glory needing her, so she doesn't have to waste time getting there.

The question is whether Freeport has an opening at the time Glory needs it. Dry dock space is extremely limited real estate, and usually booked long in advance.

Foreign flag cruise ships tend to avoid US shipyards with their high costs like the plague, unless there is no other alternative. Also, if you are referring to Avondale, that is no longer a shipyard, but has been redeveloped as a marine terminal.

Actually, you are mistaking "boat" toilet paper with what is used on ships. The cruise ship toilet paper is merely the cheapest available, and in 46 years of maintaining ship toilet systems, I have never seen a clog caused by "wrong" toilet paper.

Given the Equinox' age, it is possible that they have not had too many piping repairs during his time onboard, but it is a pretty common phenomenon on cruise ships.

Why? When they have 11 days that they can use on the crossing? What is the dry dock schedule for the dock the Glory will be using? Pride is in for 4 weeks, if I recall, and that was likely the available slot they booked a while in advance. Perhaps the Glory could not get a 4 week window, so decided to go with a non-revenue cruise and a shorter shipyard.

Unfortunately, I've found that most of the hotel staff, even senior supervisors, have absolutely no clue what goes on "behind the scenes", and will make up something to appease the passenger. It is the same water, flowing in the same system, as everywhere else on the ship. Every cabin (passenger or crew), every galley, restaurant and bar, and the laundry.

Any time a dry dock schedule is posted, it includes the transit time to and from the yard, so since they might be doing a non-revenue crossing, they could very well be informing the public that the "dry dock" starts on 3/24, especially if they are planning on a lot of demolition work on the crossing. Why? Because this gives them the time to do a lot of work by subcontractors that does not need to be done in a shipyard, and certainly not in a dry dock. That changes the "critical time line" work in the shipyard to be that requiring dry dock time.

Having caused this problem myself, when I worked cruise ships, I can tell you what it is. When the ship makes distilled water from sea water, it is like all distilled water, slightly acidic. This can cause problems with shipboard machinery and piping, as well as attacking the enamel in your teeth, so the ship neutralizes the water by passing it through a filter bed of calcium carbonate (the active ingredient in Tums). This calcium tends to build up a scale on the inside of the piping, which doesn't cause any problems as long as the pipes are filled with water. However, when the pipes are drained for repairs, this scale will break off the inner surface of the pipes, and when water is restored, it will start to circulate through the pipes. Since the water in the pipes is constantly circulating from the storage tank, around the ship and back to the storage tank, most of this scale will be quickly circulated out of the system. However, in "static" sections of piping, like those between the main line on your cabin deck, and your bathroom sink or shower (meaning there is no flow until you turn on the water tap), this scale will tend to accumulate. It will cause a yellow to brown coloration, and while not appealing visually, is not harmful. Typically, running the water for a couple of minutes will clear up the discoloration. There is no "flushing" of water lines on ships, and as for timing, a repair means that a pipe was leaking somewhere, and that needs to be repaired immediately.

While the work in the hotel is not statutory, the timing of the drydock is, and the majority of the cost and time will be on statutory/regulatory work (hull and machinery).

What doesn't compute? While not probable, due to the ship's age, it is doable. Ship disembarks passengers in NOLA on 3/24, does an 11 day non-revenue crossing to Barcelona, arriving 4/4, and has a 12 day dry dock. While looking at Glory's survey schedule, I find it interesting that Lloyds has her due for a bottom inspection (and this can't be a diver survey due to age and anniversary) in June 2023, with no postponement date. There does seem to be a one week break in her schedule in June, but getting to a shipyard from NOLA takes time.