chengkp75

All crew, in all departments have to be US citizens, or 25% Green Card holders. The major problem is that each and every one of the crew need to get a TWIC (transportation Workers Identification Card) and a Merchant Mariners Credential from the USCG. These all take time to obtain the required safety training, FBI background checks, and medical processing. When NCL hires someone, it can take about 3-5 months before that person is documented to join the ship. Crew contracts on POA are for 4 months. The hotel staff and the deck/engine ratings get one month paid vacation for every 4 months worked. The deck/engine officers get 2 months for every 4 months worked. As far as pay goes, the entry level crew make about what you would make in McDonalds, slightly above minimum wage, which in Hawaii is just over $10/hour. Wages are set by collective bargaining agreements, as all crew (except hotel supervisors) are unionized.

Since they are still in North America, they wouldn't do anything to "open up cruises" that Ensenada doesn't do already. It would still have to be a closed loop cruise.

Fairly common on turn around day, they are washing the balconies, and drag a hose from one end to the other. That way, they don't have to tromp through each cabin to get to the balcony, and upset the cabin stewards' routine.

In most cases, it is at the Captain's discretion as to whether to allow dividers open or not. This depends on the Captain's personal risk tolerance, as the dividers provide fire protection.

Interesting that these two ships have openable dividers, as typically ships built before the Star Princess fire in 2006 don't have them.

While I agree with this, a bird is a solid object in air. Radar cannot see below the water, nor can sonar see above the water. The water surface is essentially a solid surface to those waves, so objects in the zone of the surface cannot be discriminated from the surface.

Even forward looking sonar would be downward pointing, looking for the bottom coming up to meet the boat. Surface clutter would likely not even show up. But when a piece of ice, which has a similar reflective effect to the surrounding sea water, is not significantly higher than the water level, or the wave tops (each wave creates a new target), it becomes virtually impossible to detect. Radars and sonars have clutter adjustments to remove unwanted reflections, but that doesn't discriminate against objects of the same size, even if they are of different materials.

The Captain and by his authority, the security team onboard, represent the law enforcement of the flag state. If a US citizen files a complaint with NYPD or USCG (FBI), then they can investigate the incident, and make arrests on the ship (with the Captain's concurrence), or off the ship in the terminal. Serious crimes that happen on the ship against US citizens can be prosecuted in the US. The overlap between port state and flag state jurisdictions is one of the largest gray areas in maritime law.

Your USCG escort was not due to the brawl, it is a random escort done routinely for cruise ships. The USCG would have no jurisdiction over a fight on the ship, unless a US citizen called them or local LEO to swear out a claim, and even then, nothing would be done without the Captain's approval for LEO to board and make arrests, except to investigate the incident afterwards.

Even the one "news" outlet that has run the story did not claim anyone "ordered" the ship to dock. And, anyway, until the ship docks, and to a large extent, even then, what happens on the ship is under the jurisdiction of the flag state, not the port state.

Actually, the Amundsen is rated PC6, which is the second lowest polar class rating, and is designed to only operate in areas of medium first year ice, which may include old ice inclusions. She is no more designed to plow through growlers (multi-year ice, which requires a PC2 rating for year round operation), than a PC1 ice breaker. An ice breaker does not push ice aside, it rides up on it, and uses the vessel weight to crush the ice. But, they still worry about the ice as it flows down the sides of the ship, and gathers at the stern. Why don't you ask someone with unlimited funding, like the US Navy, why their radars and sonars cannot filter out surface clutter any better than commercial ones.

No, the ships don't have sonar. And, anyway, a growler would be lost in the "surface clutter" of waves, even for the most advanced sonar out there. Just as waves give false echoes to radar, they do the same for sonar, which is essentially the same principal. What the Titanic brought about was SOLAS, with mandatory lifesaving equipment, and as far as icebergs, better watertight integrity to mitigate a strike. Titanic did not sink because she struck an iceberg, she sank because she was not designed to survive one.

Well, the cruise line takes the fare and says, "this much is what we will pay a travel agent commission on, and this much we won't". Then the travel agent is free to advertise the commissionable portion as the "base fare" and move the non-commissionable portion to "fees". It's been a practice for years.

Look at the fares from Royal themselves. The "taxes and fees" category from travel agents very often include the "non-commissionable fare" as a "fee", so that they can offer a lower base fare (the commissionable portion). While the cruise lines are regulated as to what can be included in the "port taxes and fees", travel agents are not.

Well, the Sun carries a set of prop blades on the bow, so if they can mobilize the cranes and divers, I would say 36-48 hours to replace a set of blades. As noted above, she should be able to make that speed on one shaft, so there may be damage to one.

If they bent a prop blade, that could cause vibrations, and that vibration could be worse or better at various propeller speeds, so they could be looking for the right speed. The Sun has variable pitch propellers, so one or two bent blades can be replaced in the water by divers.

Not all of those were cruise ships, for me, but there are logs and trees in the harbors, etc, all ships hit things in the water. The Norwegian Sky has a piece of Canadian granite mounted on a plaque in the ECR, that was taken from inside one of the tanks, after she ran aground in the St. Lawrence river on her maiden voyage.

Oh, she's seaworthy. Even dents that bend over some internal framing, they decide to leave the dented hull plating, cut out the bent framing, and form a new piece of framing that conforms to the dent in the hull. Growlers are typically either sharp, and breach the hull, or just cause a small dent. I know the Sun's construction well, having worked on the Sky, and if they had breached the hull, they would have either started flooding the engine spaces, or there would have been an oil leak from the forward fuel tanks.

Over 46 years, I'd have to say nearly all of them. Every ship I've drydocked has had some "surprise" wrinkles (many times you don't even feel anything, but there's a dent. Divers routinely fly out to remote areas for underwater surveys, the big problem is finding an area where the visibility is sufficient. I was on a ship in the Amazon, and the pilot ran us on a sand bar (pretty common occurrence there), so we had to have a diver survey. There is only one city on the Amazon below Manaus where the water is clear enough for a diver to see his hand in front of his face, and that is Santarem, where a crystal clear river empties into the brown Amazon. There were about 4-5 ships anchored there for diver surveys alone. The basic determination of hull damage is: is there water coming in? Yes, fix it now. No, good to go for a diver inspection at a suitable port.

Given the lack of depth perception in most video, the class surveyors want a diver doing the video so that they can communicate back and forth, and determine the size and severity of dents. Many hull dents are left for the life of the ship, if they have not compromised (bent) the internal framing. Also, in many cases, the visibility is too low for good video, and so the mark 1 eyeball works better.

Cell phone coverage only extends about 20-25 miles offshore, and you will be farther than that offshore, more than 100 miles in many places like crossing the Gulf of Maine.

Believe you have your definitions mixed up here. A "spring" is a natural feature that brings water under pressure to the surface. An "artesian" well is a drilled well that does the same thing, having tapped into a source of water under pressure. Most municipalities use either pumped wells (insufficient pressure to bring the water to the surface), or "surface sources" (meaning lakes and reservoirs). You could have a spring, and then drill a well within 50 feet of it, and have an artesian well, if you hit the same stratus. Poland Spring here in Maine uses a natural spring as the water source, but have since drilled into it, and run a pipe down deep into the spring, so there is no "surface source" to that spring.

The other option would be taking a freighter, as these types of passages are common. The problem is that since covid, I'm not sure any container lines are taking passengers.

Not really. Ships are designed to be stable without any ballast. Your boat had ballast because it didn't weigh anything, and if it was a sailboat, the center of effort (where the wind force acts on the sails) is so high, it needs the weight low to counteract. When a tanker is full of oil, it has zero ballast, but when empty, it carries ballast to get the ship down in the water so the propeller stays submerged. Ballast is not really used for stability, but more for submerging the ship to the designed waterline (which then helps the stability by lowering the center of buoyancy). Cruise ships carry thousands of tons of fresh water (Prima probably around 3000), thousands of tons of fuel (Prima about 6-7,000), and even a couple of thousand tons of waste water, in addition to the weight of the engines and machinery. Remember, that apartment building is mostly empty space (a cabin is 95% volume of air), so the center of gravity is still low.

These are "inverted bows" (Virgin's ship has this also). The idea is that without the flare that a traditional bow has, which gives reserve buoyancy when striking a wave (to lift the bow up the wave), this bow is designed to slice through the wave, so less pitching, but wetter on the bow. The reverse stem gives a longer waterline length, which increases the ship's designed hull speed (the speed at which the power required to push it through the water is most efficient).