Prepare for Itinerary Change May 1 2019

[Paulchili]

1 hour ago, StanandJim said:

Aside from the ferries which you speak of there is ONE American flagged ship which carries passengers.  

 

Aren't the ships of American Cruise Lines also American flagged ?

Edited January 26, 2019 by Paulchili

[warburg]

In 2015, we sailed Insignia from Los Angeles to Miami  for 16 days with no problem ports. Our first port was San Diego where we bought great champagne for our butler organized hor d'oeuvres before dinner. We had no trouble with any port and, indeed, spent hours in Cartegena buying a piece of jewelry. We know Cartegena pretty well because we have done the Canal several times in both directions. Great fun!

Mary 

 

 

[tunaman2011]

14 hours ago, Paulchili said:

Aren't the ships of American Cruise Lines also American flagged ?

Greetings

Yes but those ships are river paddlewheelers and small river cruisers.  Not what most people think of when you talk about cruise ships.  Pride of America is the only ocean going type cruise ship flagged in the USA.  Even it took a special act of Congress because they started to build her in the US but she had to be completed in Germany.  The congressmen who pushed for an American cruise ship (and pushed through financial help for the builder) had to then get an exemption or they would look foolish.

Good Sailing

Tom

[Paulchili]

Tom,

I sure hope that some of the ships of the American Cruise Lines are ocean going as we are cruising from Baltimore to Jacksonville and there are no rivers that connect those two cities.

I am pretty sure we will be sailing on the ocean 🙂

Edited January 27, 2019 by Paulchili

[edgee]

On 1/25/2019 at 11:27 AM, tunaman2011 said:

Greetings

 

It is not a "Distant foreign Port".  They disembark the passengers there and then bus them to San Diego or LA that way avoiding violations.

Good Sailing

Tom

No longer. Celebrity and RCCL used to do that, but too many problems crossing border. Round trip Hawaii cruises from CA stop in Ensenada since RT cruises from same port only have to stop at any foreign port...not a qualified distant one. One way cruises to and from Hawaii use Vancouver as their embarkation or disembarkation point.

[tunaman2011]

23 hours ago, Paulchili said:

Tom,

I sure hope that some of the ships of the American Cruise Lines are ocean going as we are cruising from Baltimore to Jacksonville and there are no rivers that connect those two cities.

I am pretty sure we will be sailing on the ocean 🙂

Greetings

The intercoastal waterway goes all the way down to Jville.  You will not be in open ocean.

Good Sailing

Tom

[rafaelc]

On 1/26/2019 at 3:57 PM, StanandJim said:

The real shame of this whole thread is that this Law was instituted to promote passenger ships within  the American Merchant Marine , and they are virtually nonexistent today.  

Except for the Portrait of Dorian Gray, here....  what a disgrace-

 

 

[rafaelc]

Very sad to see that pic of the rusty BIG U.  I worked two summers on the SS United States ('67&'68).  It was a great experience and allowed me to make some serious money for college and 1st auto purchase.  The work was hard but the fellow crew members (mostly americans) were terrific and welcoming to a teen will little experience.  

[BaumD]

American Cruiseline ships are built in Salisbury, MD. 

 

[ano]

I've gone on many West coast cruises with the only foreign port Ensenada, so it must be distant enough.  I have to assume the people at Oceania planning these itineraries know the law and rules.

[Paulchili]

22 minutes ago, ano said:

I've gone on many West coast cruises with the only foreign port Ensenada, so it must be distant enough.  I have to assume the people at Oceania planning these itineraries know the law and rules.

Was it a RT cruise with the same return port as the departure port?

If so, AFAIK different rules apply to these RTs than transports from one US city to another.

[edgee]

4 hours ago, ano said:

I've gone on many West coast cruises with the only foreign port Ensenada, so it must be distant enough.  I have to assume the people at Oceania planning these itineraries know the law and rules.

No such thing as "distant enough." If cruise is round trip from a U.S. Port ship must stop at any foreign port. Ensenada qualifies. If it is not a round trip itinerary and ship cruises between two U.S. ports, ship must stop at a distant foreign port as defined by regulation. For Panama Canal cruises the only distant foreign ports which can be reasonably accessed are Cartagena or one of the ABC Islands (Aruba, Bonaire or Curaçao.) 

Edited January 29, 2019 by edgee

[chengkp75]

On 1/26/2019 at 9:26 PM, StanandJim said:

Aside from the ferries which you speak of there is ONE American flagged ship which carries passengers.  

Okay, several common misconceptions here, so this will likely be pretty long.

 

Let's start with the OP's discussion of the Regatta's itinerary, and how some folks here are misconstruing the PVSA.  For a round trip cruise that starts and ends at the same US port, the ship only needs to call at any foreign port.  For a cruise that starts at one US port, and ends at another US port, the ship needs to call at a "distant" foreign port, and a distant foreign port is defined by CBP as "not in North or Central America, the Caribbean, Bahamas, or Bermuda".  This is why itineraries like the Regatta's typically stop in Venezuela or the ABC islands (the ABC's are considered to be in South America).

 

Now, let's look at the real origin of the PVSA, not the one that Wikipedia and most opponents put out there.  The PVSA was passed long before there were flags of convenience, or foreign flag passenger vessels working out of the US, and was at the time of the infancy of US maritime labor organizations, so those arguments all go out the window.  In the early to mid 1800's the vast numbers of steamboats (all US flag) plying the US's rivers and harbors, were experiencing a frightening number of fires and explosions from their boilers.  To stop the carnage of killed and injured passengers, Congress passed several "Steamboat Acts" in the mid 1800's, establishing the Steamboat Inspection Service (the precursor of today's USCG Marine Inspection Division that you see inspecting the cruise ships), to enforce mandated safety measures.  As these various Steamboat Acts got more stringent, the ship owners, in order to get out of the cost of compliance and inspection, flagged their vessels to other countries so that the US law would not apply.  This is when, and why, Congress passed the PVSA, restricting "coastwise" (domestic) passenger traffic to US flag ships, in order to force compliance with safety regulations. 

 

And, to truly understand the PVSA, and its ramifications, you need to know the international definition of a "passenger vessel", and that is "any vessel that carries more than 12 passengers.  Now, understand, this is the Passenger Vessel Services Act, not the Cruise VSA, so it applies to all passenger vessels.  This means, in addition to the POA, and the Blount and American Cruise Line small ships, and the American Queen riverboats, that it applies to every ferry, commuter boat, water taxi, casino boat, sight seeing or whale watching boat, and large charter fishing boats operating anywhere in the US.  If you take away the protection of the PVSA, you would allow all of these vessels to flag in foreign countries and take them out of US tax laws, labor laws, and USCG inspection.  And before you say, "hold on" the USCG inspects foreign cruise ships, that is only partially true.  The USCG, in their "Port State Control" function, can and do inspect foreign vessels to ensure compliance with all international laws and conventions (SOLAS, MARPOL, MLC, STCW), but they cannot hold these ships to the more rigorous standards that have been instituted on US flag vessels.

 

Now, another poster mentioned Puerto Rico as being opposed to the PVSA.  The cruise industry and Puerto Rico lobbied for over 10 years, but finally got an exemption to the PVSA, so you are allowed to carry passengers from PR to the mainland US on a foreign flag vessel, yet only one cruise line chose to do so, Carnival, and they ended the service after only a couple of years due to lack of interest in the itinerary.  As for PR and Hawaii paying a high price for shipping, what folks don't understand is that these places are free to ship products in from overseas (where a lot of the products are made) on foreign flag ships at no penalty, the Jones Act only applies to shipments coming from the US, and even the GAO study has shown that there is no definitive proof that the Jones Act adversely affects the economies there.

 

The vast majority of PVSA jobs (ferries, water taxis, sight seeing boats) are non-union jobs, and even CLIA has stated that there is no interest, after the Puerto Rico example, in changing or repealing the PVSA, as they see no significant benefit to their bottom line.

 

And finally, the story behind the Pride of America.  This ship was originally being built in the US for Hawaiian American Cruises, a US owned company as required by the PVSA, but Hawaiian American went bankrupt after 9-11, and the US government was left with a half completed cruise ship that they had guaranteed the loan for to the shipyard.  No one else stepped up, so NCL proposed that if they paid the loan guarantee, would Congress give the ship (and two other foreign built ships) a waiver of the US built clause to allow the ships to trade in the PVSA trade.  This was done as part of the original deal for the ship, not as some afterthought to "avoid embarrassing" the Senator (not Congressman) who pushed the deal, but only after the original owner, who would have brought the ships to Hawaii anyway, folded.

[chengkp75]

If one needs an example of what taking away the PVSA would do, one only needs to look at the recent litany of incidents involving "duck boats".  While these are US registered, and inspected by the USCG as passenger vessels, because of their hybrid nature (truck and boat), USCG requirements have been modified and waived to accommodate DOT requirements and state Motor Vehicle laws.  The USCG has never been happy with duck boats as they are currently operated, but have had to bow to the other departmental laws to enable the boats to operate on land as well.  This would be the same if all the small passenger vessels in the US were under foreign flags, and the USCG could only enforce international requirements.

[retafcruiser]

Thank you, Chengkp75.  I have read your explanations/discussions on another board and find you to have an excellent perspective on this subject.  Many people have not considered all aspects of the act, and others are uneducated about application.  It is really quite simple to understand, and your detailed explanation is always a big help.

[edgee]

6 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

so you are allowed to carry passengers from PR to the mainland US on a foreign flag vessel, yet only one cruise line chose to do so, Carnival, and they ended the service after only a couple of years due to lack of interest in the itinerary.  

Thanks for the great explanation. Only slight correction---other cruise lines, on occasion currently use the PR exemption. Celebrity often uses it on a seasonal basis with a short 6 day cruise between Summit's winter home port of San Juan and the ship's summer home port of Bayonne, NJ. Also, Crystal Serenity cruises between Miami and San Juan, usually on a one time basis during the winter. There may be a few others, but not on a regular basis.

[Charles4515]

Thank you, Chengkp75.  I have read your explanations/discussions on another board and find you to have an excellent perspective on this subject.  Many people have not considered all aspects of the act, and others are uneducated about application.  It is really quite simple to understand, and your detailed explanation is always a big help.

Chengkp75 has a personal and financial stake in the law. I am opposed to any protectionist laws. It is simple to understand, these laws benefit a few and line the pockets of a few.


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[chengkp75]

1 hour ago, Charles4515 said:

 

Chengkp75 has a personal and financial stake in the law. I am opposed to any protectionist laws. It is simple to understand, these laws benefit a few and line the pockets of a few.


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Actually, I do not have a personal and financial stake in the PVSA.  First, I have not worked in the passenger vessel trade for 10 years.  Second, as I stated, the vast majority of PVSA jobs on vessels are non-union jobs, which as a union mariner I am prohibited from taking.  And, finally, I am two years from retirement, and have no plans to re-enter the limited positions that the passenger vessel trade provides to my union's members (less than 2% of membership), nor to continue my maritime career after that.

 

I guess this means you are opposed to the FAA laws that require domestic air travel to be from US carriers, and the DOT/ICC laws that preclude foreign truck drivers from working in the US, as other examples of protectionist laws?  How about patent and copyright laws?  Those are the biggest example of benefiting the few.

 

I will also say that 80 nations have maritime cabotage laws similar to the PVSA and Jones Acts, including Russia, China, Japan, and Brazil, and the EU restricts coastwise trade to EU member nations.

[Paulchili]

I know very little about this subject to take sides but IMO chengkp75 has always offered expert insight into the topics he posted on and I appreciate his expert opinion.

That said, I do not know for a fact that he is correct but I do believe so - not only on this subject but on other topics he posted about on this forum. I hope he continues to contribute on this forum.

That is my opinion.