chengkp75

Even a power strip with a "circuit breaker" only opens the "hot" leg, which does not fully address the problem of overloading due to the neutral on the ship not being at the same voltage as the ground, so even when the breaker trips, the power strip could still draw significant current. This is why the circuit breakers on the ship are two pole breakers.

And, as it says, the reactors are still under development for shoreside applications, let alone seaborne ones, and Ulstein doesn't say whether they have talked to class about whether this would get approved. As they say, many years in development, and no guarantee the ships would be built as proposed. The drones would be used for search, not rescue, and not sure how much they would help.

Typically, HAL phone reps don't know anything about the PVSA, which is why they frequently allow B2B cruises to be booked, which are then disallowed by the "compliance" department later. Not sure what your point is, this is still a violation of the PVSA. Now, HAL may have decided to swallow the fine, or the HAL agents are giving out incorrect information. HAL may allow boarding in Juneau, or not, and the OP may or may not be liable for the fine. When CBP gets the itinerary between Juneau and Seattle, that is when CBP will catch the violation, and levy the fine at the end of the cruise.

The only collapsible ones I see only have a "spin dry" feature, which only guarantees damp clothes with no dripping water, but this would still fall under the "no household appliances" ban. I would also be hesitant to say that any detergent is acceptable on the ship, even the so-called "biodegradable" sheets mentioned above. The ship's waste water treatment plant operates on a different system than a septic tank, or municipal system, due to the throughput rate, and these may affect the operation of the system.

Again, not correct. The OP's cruise is still a Juneau to Seattle "open jaw" cruise, which requires not just a "foreign port", but a "distant" foreign port. Distant foreign ports are defined by CBP as any port outside of North America, Central America, Caribbean, Bahamas, or Bermuda. The closest "distant" foreign port to Alaska is Cartagena, Colombia, or perhaps Russia.

No, they can't. If the passenger joined in Juneau, their cruise would be Juneau to Seattle (CBP does not care how a cruise is advertised or sold, just where the passenger gets on and gets off at the end). This is transportation between two US ports, and without a port call at a "distant" foreign port, it violates the PVSA. Both in that case, and in the case you mention of leaving prior to a foreign port call, the line is fined $765 per passenger, and the ticket contract grants the line the right to pass that fine to the passenger. If the "downlining" involved embarking at a Canadian port for an Alaskan cruise, then it would be allowed.

No hydrogen powered cruise ship regulations have been approved by the class societies, and the infrastructure to produce hydrogen is not exactly green either. Never going to happen. Every single passenger who develops cancer after a cruise on a nuclear powered cruise ship would be suing the cruise line. Not sure that any of your examples would be possible on cruise ships. At the worst, the ship would revert to conventional fuel, since the engines are "dual fuel" and burn 5% diesel fuel all the time anyway, and the regulations require a sufficient quantity of "conventional fuel" to return to port if the LNG system goes down. This is going to be a massive investment, to provide variable speed drives for all the fans and pumps for the HVAC system, not sure how long a pay-back period is going to be on this. As for the air filtration systems, this will actually require more energy. Again, variable speed drives are not cheap, and continue to take up "real estate" in the technical areas of the ship. Seriously? They haven't changed to LED lighting already? 15 years ago, NCL had LED lighting vendors offering to pay for the conversion of the lighting, in exchange for a percentage of the savings over several years. This is way overdue. Again, really? This has been used on NCL ships over 15 years ago, and has been available to merchant ships at least that long, so why is Carnival so far behind on this?

Frankly, until you know the extent of Canadian law in regards to UNCLOS and ISPS, you have no idea whether your complaint is valid or not. The primary motivating factor would be the ISPS plan for the port of Victoria, and what they decide is the security zone requirements for a foreign naval vessel, and whether there is or isn't a physical limit of public access to a vessel that may be of high risk. There would likely have been a continual "Pan, Pan, Pan" (urgent situation that does not pose an immediate danger to a vessel) radio call from CCG that a security zone has been established around the naval vessel, but most small boat operators don't bother to listen to VHF 16 to receive these calls, so they are not informed of the security zone. Aspects of UNCLOS, in regards to foreign naval vessels, would also impact what the security requirements are.

Chamorro's have always been a lucrative market for POA hiring. A lot of my long term engineering staff were from Guam.

So, where does Miami get the power to run the pumps that pump the geothermal water around the system (and that is not deep sea water, but water circulated to the deep ground, which is cooler), if there is no fuel burned? Where is the liquid refrigerant stored? How much is needed to keep the ship cool if you are not recirculating the refrigerant, but only using it once? Even better, where is the gaseous refrigerant stored? That would likely take the entire volume of the ship. How long would it take to pump this refrigerant on and off the ship. Then the liquid refrigerant needs to be compressed, so that it can absorb more heat when it flashes to gas, and where does this power come from? You are merely taking a refrigerant system that is self-contained on the ship, that uses sea water to condense the refrigerant, with one that is split between the ship and shore that uses geothermal cooling to condense the refrigerant, with all the attendant losses in efficiency in storing cooling agent and pumping from ship to shore and back. Geothermal heating/cooling (which I think is not common in Europe), uses water that is pumped down a hole in the ground, where it is cooled off by the earth (to about 50*F at 20 feet down or more), and then pumped to the cooling/heating coil for the house to directly cool the air, without any refrigeration system (and its attendant compressor, etc). That is what is efficient, is simply using the earth to cool/heat the water, over a refrigeration system, and this would not be possible on a ship.

Then they are burning through over $900k a week in fuel.

It's not "for giggles". It is cleared not only with the ship, but the armed forces command, and is part of maritime security training for the flight crews. In the North Sea, years ago, since the German air force had lost too many pilots to power lines when doing low level bombing practice, it was moved offshore, and done over merchant ships, again with clearance from command and the ship.

The USCG has additional regulations for foreign flag cruise ships that use lifeboats as tenders, in US waters. It is likely that the Encore, which was not scheduled to use tenders in Alaska, has not met these requirements. There is additional equipment and additional training and certification that needs to be met, and this needs to be certified by the class society on an annual basis.

Thanks. More of a Red/Green guy, and don't use the tunnels hardly at all.

Just for curiosity, as I'm in Boston regularly, what lines are they shutting down?

My God, you come up with some ideas. 1. The chilled water does not reach 70*F when it returns to the chiller. It is about 55*F, which is the beauty of a closed system, you can move enough water that the delta temperature never gets too high. Remember, the air supplied (either through the fresh air coolers, or the cabin coolers, is not 70*F, it is colder than that, in order to cool the room down, so if the supplied air is not 70*, the chilled water isn't. 2. Where is this 200 meter hose stored when the ship is in less than 200 meters of water? Is it rolled up on a drum? Where is this drum? Under the ship? In a tunnel in the bottom of the ship? How much drag is that? Or is it brought back into the ship to a reel through some sort of seal, that is capable of sealing around the hose, but is also capable of passing the required flanges (because a bolted flange would be the only safe method of joining hose of that size, and that length, under that stress)? 3. When the ship is in shallow water, and there is no cold water to pump up, how does the AC work? 4. The refrigeration cycle uses evaporation and condensing of a refrigerant to cool the chilled water, and since there is always some "latent heat of evaporation" when a substance changes from liquid to gas (evaporation) (latent heat of evaporation is the amount of heat needed to change an amount of refrigerant (or water) from liquid to vapor without changing its temperature), the heat that is absorbed from the chilled water by a ton of refrigerant flashing from liquid to gas is far more than what a simple water/water heat exchange by one ton of cold sea water could do. 5. What size hose were you envisioning? Cause it would need to be a 16" diameter hose, at a minimum, and 200 meters long? Your talking about 7-8 tons of just the hose, plus the water inside it, since you're dragging that along with you, which would be around another 25 tons. While geothermal heating and cooling is efficient on land (it ain't moving), it is again a closed system, unlike your idea of an open system taking cold water and discharging it after it has cooled the chill water. Any closed system is more efficient than an open system.

This problem has nothing to do with the design of the HVAC system, nothing to do with doors being opened, nor with any "reported" cut back in AC "to save fuel". It takes more energy to allow a space to warm up and then cool it down again, than it does to maintain a constant temperature. This sounds like a problem we had on the NCL Pride of Aloha. An air compressor was added to the ship after construction, and for some reason, the HVAC chilled water system was used for the cooling medium. The cooler failed, and compressed air was injected into the chilled water system. This is the system that does the "AC" on the ship, they circulate 50*F fresh water around the ship to cool the air, not refrigerant like in your home. This compressed air would collect at the highest cooler in each loop, and once there was enough, there would be no more water flow, and the spaces that that cooler handled would get hot. We would bleed the air out, that would fix that space's temperature, and another cooler would block up. No one was around from the time the compressor was installed, so we didn't know the compressor was using chilled water, so it took a few days to figure out where the air was coming from. A "migratory" problem like what is being reported seems to fit the "air in the system" cause.

There will normally be a line of cabs outside the terminal. Fare to Tea Party ship will be about $7 plus tip. Quick note, if you google "taxi fare finder" and the name of the city, you will get a site that calculates the fares if you know the starting and end points.

Except for POA, where even at the low rates they pay, crew costs are above fuel costs. POA, at today's bunker prices (she uses scrubbers, so can continue to use older, higher sulfur fuel, IFO380, and I'm extrapolating fuel costs from the mainland, as all of her fuel is transported from the mainland, and she is one of a very few users of bunker oil), burns about $500k of fuel a week.

Well, when I see that lobsters are $6.99/lb (or about $10-12 for a lobster), and picked meat is over $40/lb, my labor is worth it, for the less than 2 minutes it takes to completely shell a lobster (the tail takes 10 seconds).

This is true, even before the POA was commissioned, when there was just the Aloha. It is one of the reasons that service has always been a problem on these ships, they are always sailing short handed. To address the money issue, yes, these are the lowest paying deep sea jobs in the US, but also, there is no pool of credentialed mariners waiting to take the jobs, like there are on foreign ships (because the credentialing of foreign crew is much less, for hotel crew), so when NCL hires someone, it takes a couple of months, at the best, to get that person to the ship.

POA steams for about 60 hours in the week, and much of that loafing along between the islands at slow speed. The Spirit cruise is steaming for 180 hours, 122 of which are done at full speed, and you will see that the fuel consumption is about 4-5 times what POA would burn in the week (fuel consumption to speed is not a linear function, 11 knots burns about 1/3 of what 22 knots burns). Fuel cost is the single largest line item in a cruise ship's operating budget.

About 90% of the DSC is distributed to the crew who are in the "DSC pool". Not all crew are in the distribution, it is mainly hotel staff (primarily front of house, but some back of house as well, no supervisors), not the technical departments or entertainment. The 10% goes to crew welfare fund to fund holiday parties, and buy equipment for crew lounges and gyms. The DSC makes up the vast majority of their pay. I have not heard that they did away with the crew stores, but don't know for sure. Over the years that I was with NCL, they increased the HR department greatly, adding "crew welfare officer" to handle the store and set up crew parties, excursions, contests to give prizes to crew who got the most "atta boy" cards from guests, etc. I don't see them going backwards on this, in a time when obtaining and retaining crew is so difficult.

Yeah, right. Trade in a job for half the vacation days and sharing a cabin with 3 others. And, all those merchant ships are having trouble getting crew.

While Eventide is open for lunch, Scales and Street & Co open at 4-5pm.