chengkp75

Not entirely correct. The Captain is required to offer assistance, if it does not risk the safety of his ship, passengers, cargo, crew, or the environment.

Not that much. Pretty much everything from cabins goes into a large bag on the steward's cart, and then this is hand sorted at the garbage room. They may have two bags on the cart, and sort out some hard items like metal and glass, but that's about it.

The poop bags would be fine. EVERYTHING gets sorted. The only thing that goes into the incinerator is cardboard and paper (along with biohazard and controlled substances). We had sorting bins for batteries, disposable razors (handled as sharps), general plastics, metal, glass, biohazard, cloth, and a few more I'm forgetting. From these bins, the "environmental operators" would further sort some things like metal and glass into sub-sets, and bundle things into larger piles for compacting, or putting things like batteries into recycling buckets and landing ashore. Then you've got the trash that comes from the crew, like lightbulbs and fluorescent tubes (that have to be crushed in special containers to retain the mercury vapors), etc, etc.

Just know that those sanitary bags, and any other biohazard bags (red bags) you fill up in your cabin get sorted from the rest of the trash, and when down at the "garbage center" will get placed in large red bags to be fed by hand into the incinerators, rather than being shredded and allowed to sit in the incinerator feed silo.

Well, that cuts out about half of Princess' fleet for you, since 6 other ships are older. 7 out of 15 ships must be "beyond their life span".

This is not correct. I have seen repeated reports of Dyson products not working on ships, even ships that allow personal hair dryers. I believe it has to do with the electronics of the "digital" motor used in Dyson products. I have also seen reports where ceramic hair straighteners also fail to work on ship, and this is likely due to electronics as well. Those who report a complete failure of these products to work on ship also report that they work just fine on land.

This is not correct. It is legal on the federal level if it has less than 0.3% THC, whether it is from hemp or cannabis. Typically, hemp produced CBD has lower levels of THC than cannabis, but there is still a detectable level of THC in most CBD products, unless the producer creates a "cannabanoid isolate" to remove all THC. If a CBD product, regardless of source, has more than 0.3% THC, then it is illegal.

I'm wondering if they were doing maintenance to the fresh air supply systems, like coil cleaning.

I don't have any idea, never heard of this before. Was the room warm at night?

The IMO

The article and study you quote from the Diamond Princess is flawed in my opinion, in that they did not actually study the HVAC system of the ship, but just said, "well they only use 30% fresh air, so everything else must be co-mingled in the recirculation". This is completely false. Bingo, miles of new ducting, etc. Use of improved filters, and UV sterilizers can help with overall air quality, but have not been shown to mitigate Covid in any way, as the ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers) have stated. The only improved filters that would help mitigate covid are the filters in each cabin. I know I've described this many times, both in discussions about balcony doors, and also repeatedly during the pandemic, but I'll describe shipboard HVAC systems again. Cabins: There are 3 HVAC systems in each cabin. The first is the one controlled by the cabin thermostat. This system is just like a window AC in your house, it takes warm air from the room, and cools it (the fan and cooling coil are either in the bathroom under the vanity or in the "mechanical locker" where they work on your blocked toilet, just outside the cabin), and returns it to the room. This is the "recirculation". Note that there is no cross-contamination between cabins, the ductwork only goes from your cabin to the cooler and back to your cabin. The second system is the fresh air delivery system. Air exchange is essential, not just to keep the room from feeling "stuffy", but for health reasons as noted in the study of the Diamond Princess. Fresh air reduces the concentration of a pathogen if present, by diluting it with clean air. Now, this fresh air supply system takes air from outside the ship, cools it, and delivers it to cabins. The system does service many cabins (around 30-50, all the cabins on one deck, between sets of fire doors), but the air is one way, from the outside to the cabins, so again, no mixing between cabins. Addition of this quantity (20-30%) of air to an enclosed cabin will overpressurize the cabin, and this is done for a reason. The third HVAC system is the bathroom exhaust. This is designed to take "stale" air away, not just from the bathroom, but from the cabin, in almost the same quantity as the fresh air supply. This air is also one way, from a bunch of cabins to the outside of the ship, so again, no mixing between cabins. The bathroom exhaust takes away slightly less air than the fresh air supply brings in, and this keeps the cabin at a slight overpressure, so that air flows out of the cabin under the hallway door. This keeps smoke in the hallway from entering your cabin in case of a fire, but also, keeps the public air in the passageway from entering your cabin, to prevent mixing of air. Public spaces: Public spaces use the same types of 3 HVAC systems as cabins: fresh air supply, recirculation, and exhaust. However, due to open doors, etc, between public spaces, there is much more mixing of air, and a higher likelihood of pathogens entering the space than your cabin. Here, a higher percentage of fresh air supply (higher turnover rate), can be very beneficial. However, I have not seen any study that shows that recirculated air in an HVAC system can carry viable virus from the space, through the ducting, to the cooler, back through the ducting, and into the space again. What has been shown is that airflow in the space, caused by HVAC supply and exhaust ducts, can spread virus further than just a person to person spread. But, this is where additional fresh air supply can dilute the possible problems. These systems are the same as before Covid, and are the same as any large building with a central HVAC system, anywhere in the world. As far as I know, there were samples collected from the HVAC louvers in cabins on the Diamond Princess, and showed that there were viruses there days after the people were removed, but this was only done in cabins with a positive case, and the louvers were not identified as to whether they were the cabin recirculation or fresh air louver.

As I've said many times over the years, and then I'll duck back out of this tipping thread, the cruise lines don't use the DSC model for any potential tax benefit for the crew, they use it for the following reasons: 1. It allows them to advertise the lowest fare possible 2. It provides a "carrot and stick" method of management (which has been long shown to be ineffective), making the crew responsible for policing the service of other crew, rather than investing in proper, modern, personnel management for supervisors, and also shifts the blame for the "stick" from the cruise line to the passenger. That's it, that's all there is to it. No tipping culture, no tax benefit, nothing.

This is laughable.

If you were to go work on a cruise ship for 8-10 months, would you give up your apartment or sell your house, since you aren't going to be there? Would you toss all your stuff into a storage unit? Do you have a wife and/or kids, who need to eat, have a home, and pay for medical expenses while you are gone? I know I had to pay all these things for the 6 months a year I was on ships for 46 years. Unless the crew member is living in his parent's basement, they have expenses while on the ship.

Any compensation received from the employer is considered taxable income. The only "gratuities" that are not taxable are those received directly from the customer.

I rarely rely on Wiki for source material. But, even then, the quote mentions rogue waves to be "notorious" west of the Horn, while the Polaris was east. Even granting your contention that rogue waves are more predominant there, what precautions should the Captain of the Polaris have made that were not made, to prepare for the unlikely event of encountering one? Do you know if those precautions were followed? And, was the Captain of the ship following Polaris (not sure what line) also at fault for making the crossing of the Drake passage at the same time? Looked back at the "expeditions" thread, and saw that 4 other cruise ships were crossing the Drake passage that same day as Polaris. Did they all make a mistake?

Not apparently wrong. As said, no ship is ever designed to never have a failure when unusual circumstances happen. Despite your conjecture that there are more rogue waves in the Drake passage than elsewhere, they are rare, everywhere (latest estimates are that there are 10 present at any time, anywhere in the world), and so the need to design for the low likelihood of encountering one is not considered. Do your racing sailboats redesign themselves to survive capsizing in rogue waves? The ships are not classed by Lloyds, but by DNV. Here is the condition of class (repairs that need to be made to again meet class standards to sail) issued to the Polaris on this incident: 2022-12-07, Buenos Aires Damages on port side at Deck No.2 level, between frames #188 and 216 are to be repaired. The following conditions are to be complied with for the single voyage from Ushuaia to the repair shipyard at Punta Arenas: - The voyage shall be undertaken without passengers - The damaged cabins and corridor shall be isolated. - Alternative escape routes shall be arranged if needed. - Weather routing shall be applied and it should be avoided to expose port side to the open sea. - Controls / safeguards described in the relevant risk assessment shall be implemented on board before departure. There is no mention of "reclassification" or any modification to the ship. It is to be repaired back to original. Now, if the AIBN investigation determines that the window failures were of such nature as to pose a high probability of failure again (i.e. not in a low probability situation like a rogue wave), then it may recommend to class to revisit the standards, and DNV may study it and may decide to either revise or not the requirements.

I don't believe that there is any scientific data to support your supposition. Due to the short lived nature of rogue waves, it is difficult for scientists to determine how many there are, short of reports from vessels that have actually encountered them. The two I've encountered, one was in the North Atlantic, and one was off of Rio de Janeiro, over 4000 km north of the Drake passage. That will need forensic engineering analysis, but would depend on how the wave struck the ship, exactly, and the windows a deck up are subject to lesser force than the ones that failed, perhaps by hundreds of tons of force. Please tell me about any "unbreakable" window, anywhere in the world. Even Musk's "unbreakable" windows in his electric truck broke during it's unveiling. Why did the class societies allow these windows on this ship? Because engineering data and over a hundred years of experience in underwriting shipbuilding and maintenance, they decided that the windows were of sufficient strength to sail anywhere in the world. One of my experiences with a rogue wave, the impact on the ship snapped an underwater sea water pipe, causing flooding of an engineering space. Even though that pipe had been determined as safe and seaworthy for any ocean, the power of a rogue wave still snapped it, and led to a night of patching and packing while being drenched in cold sea water.

While the ships do have infrared sensors, that is no indication that there is an automated man overboard (MOB) system. As far as I can remember, only Disney went fleetwide with automatic MOB systems. The IR sensors are most likely fed to the surveillance office, where every camera on the ship is scrolled through on a multi-image screen every 10 seconds or so, so unless there was a sharp eyed surveillance officer who caught the glimpse of the person going overboard, at that instant, it is merely recorded for later investigation, just like all the video.

While some nations can and do limit access to certain areas based on emissions and energy issues, that does not make older ships obsolete. The IMO has been making ships safer, more environmentally friendly, and more fuel efficient through regulations for decades, but one thing they all have in common, is that they are never retroactive, only applying to newbuild ships. Given that 80+% of the world's economy travels by ship, they cannot make the vast majority of them obsolete overnight.

The maintenance cost for any ship starts to rise exponentially when the ship reaches 15 years of age. So, those lines that buy or keep operating "mature" ships have to charge more, and perhaps obtain a smaller profit margin than the mainstream lines.

But, as a further note, the only reason the ship rolled on its side was that it grounded again on the island. Had muster drill been called when Schettino was notified that the ship was flooding (and the number of compartments that were flooding, which he knew to be more than the ship could stay afloat with), which was nearly 45 minutes before the ship grounded a second time, then the muster could have been completed, with all pax at their boats, and all crew at their emergency stations, long before any boats became unusable. And, 23 of 26 lifeboats were launched, meaning that 10 boats on the "high" side of the ship were actually launched.

Those inside locations have been studied and designed by maritime safety experts to ensure adequate ability to get people in and out, and to have additional structural fire protection.

If you read the official report on the Concordia, you will find that in fact the crew did well, and confusion was due to them following orders that a passenger muster was never called, so they sent people away. In fact, a passenger muster was never called, but a single announcement to "abandon ship", which caused further confusion as this signals the crew to leave their emergency stations (which are to help passengers) and abandon ship.

Yes, there have been studies of both successes and failures (I think it was the Deutschland that sank in WW2, where the location of bodies was studied to determine crowd behavior), that have been used to create computer paradigms which are used to determine acceptable muster station locations, etc. No, unlike an airline emergency, where the need is to get you off the plane, a cruise ship passenger muster really has not a lot to do with boarding boats and evacuating the ship. The muster is for accountability, to get passengers away from the emergency, into known and controlled areas where they can be accounted for. If you just show up at any muster station, it completely disrupts the accounting (mustering) process, as that station leader will not have you on their list, and they will not want to clog the airwaves with messages from a muster station to the muster control that "so and so" is actually at a different station. This could also lead to overcrowding of the muster location, exceeding the ingress/egress ability to get from the station to the boats, should that be necessary, or to get out of the station, should it become no longer tenable by the emergency. This is why the in person muster drill is far superior to the e-muster, as it gives the crew, who are stationed around the ship, specifically for the guiding of passengers to their stations, a real life chance to deal with large, uncooperative crowds.