chengkp75

By far the most common cruise ship fire I've experienced (about 3 or 4) were in the incinerator silos. For those not familiar, the incinerators are fed with shredded paper and cardboard to burn. This material is fed by crew into a shredder, and then falls into a hopper that holds about 6 cubic meters of waste. The fires typically happen when the crew are not totally vigilant in sorting the garbage, and a piece of metal (commonly a AA battery) gets chewed up in the shredder, causing a spark, which ignites the shredded waste in the hopper. This smoldering paper/cardboard is then covered by more paper/cardboard, and partially smothered, so it remains a smolder. Once the ship leaves port, and the incinerator is fired up, as the waste is fed into the incinerator, the smolder moves closer to the surface, until it gets enough oxygen to ignite, and then you've got a fire in the hopper. The hopper is fitted with a steam smothering system which replaces the oxygen with steam to put the fire out, but then you've got 6 cubic meters of wet paper/cardboard that won't dry out, and won't burn in the incinerator. So, we try to contain the burn, and feed the burning material into the incinerator as fast as possible, and let it burn where it is supposed to burn.

The room and board issue comes up every time crew compensation is discussed. Unless the crew member is single, and living with his/her parents, then he/she has an apartment or home that is either unoccupied, or occupied by the crew member's family, while the crew member is on the ship, so they are still paying rent/mortgage while on the ship, and if they have a family, they are still paying for utilities and food while on the ship. As for medical, that only applies to the crew member, not family, nor to the crew member when not on the ship.

Your facts are not quite correct. The $666/month is the minimum wage for seafarers, and is based on a 40 hour work week. Hours in excess of 40/week have to be paid at 125% of the base wage ($3.84/hour base x 125% = $4.80/hour overtime). So, given that the average cruise ship crew works about 90 hours/week, that is around $1500/month. Both you and TRLD are somewhat correct about the hours worked. Cruise lines can choose to adopt either the STCW "work hours" regime, or the STCW "rest hours" regime. The "work hours" says a maximum of 10 hours per day of work, while the "rest hours" regime says that the crew must have a minimum of 77 hours rest in any 7 day period (or 90 hours of work). So, the deck and engine departments will work about 84 hours/week, while the hotel crew will work between 84-90 hours/week. Regardless, each crew member is paid for each hour worked, whether at base wage or overtime, even though it does not show on their contract or pay voucher as being "per hour", it is calculated by the cruise line into a monthly salary based on how many hours of work are specified in the contract. The salary calculation is not "supplemented" by the daily gratuity, the DSC is factored in as a part of the monthly salary. This is specified in the crew's contract as their salary is made up by X% salary, and X% DSC. And, until the removal of DSC drops the monthly salary below the minimum of $666, the cruise line does not have to make up the difference. I didn't find anything new in the video, as it has been known in the industry for decades that the cruise fare basically covers the ship's operating expenses, and the profit comes from "onboard revenue". And, as the writer says, the "economies of scale" are what is driving the cruise lines to larger and larger ships.

But, steamers are not even a miniscule user of water, so that is not a concern.

Oh, yes, RCI makes bundles and bundles of money from the few people who send clothes out to get ironed. It is risk/reward. Banning hair care appliances would cause a great uproar (high risk, potential loss of customers), to a high reward as well (limiting heating appliances), while banning steamers is low risk (not many complaints) to high reward (limiting heating appliances). The insurance premium the ship pays is based on this risk/reward calculation. The irons the ship provides are inspected, tested, and repaired on a regular basis, something the cruise line cannot do to passengers' appliances. As someone who has fought shipboard fires, has worked with shipboard electrical systems, and understands maritime risk/reward considerations for over 4 decades, I personally would like to see hair appliances banned as well, but I also know that that would never happen, so you adjust to the risk.

If the watermakers were able to run 24/7, then, yes, they can make more than is needed. However, since they cannot run when less than 12 miles from shore, or in port, and if slow steaming that limits/reduces the amount of water that can be produced, so quite a few ships, depending on the itinerary, will load water while in port, as the ship cannot produce enough for the cruise based on the cruise parameters.

My personal and professional experience has been that outside of the Deck and Engine departments, very few folks who work on cruise ships know the first thing about how they work, or what goes on, or why.

The OP's username explains it all.

"Swinging the ship" to calibrate the compass does not entail sailing in loops, it requires the ship to spin 360* while remaining as stationary as possible. The ship had an issue with one of the azipods/control systems that affected the redundancy of steering, so the ship would not be allowed to dock without tug assistance, so the ship was sailing in circles to kill time until the problem is fixed, or the tugs show up.

Alaska has no state sales tax. Some of the cruise port cities have municipal sales taxes, but generally don't impose them on the cruise ships. The Hawaii GET is around 4.5-6% (if I remember correctly), depending on which county (island) you are in. State jurisdiction goes out to 3 nautical miles offshore, at which time the ship will recalibrate the sales registers to no longer charge GET. Vancouver will also charge sales tax.

Considering that the accolades the Sun attributes to QM2 were overtaken nearly two decades ago, the rest of the tripe in the article should be treated accordingly. Yes, a compressor fire would be a very small incident to even the engineering crew, let alone the entire ship's emergency teams.

Yes, the OP was planning on taking the same ship for both legs of the trip. That one day cruise is how the ship transitions between the California Coastal cruise season and the Alaska cruise season, which home ports in Seattle for round trip Alaska cruises. And, you are correct, if the OP was going to change ships, then it would be legal. And, each of the legs, on the same ship, would be legal, separately, because the both begin or end in a foreign port, and therefore do not fall under the PVSA, since they are not domestic voyages, which is what the PVSA applies to. It is when the two legal, foreign cruises are combined, that they become one domestic voyage from San Diego to Seattle. And, the PVSA's definition of "distant" really has no bearing on how far apart the ports are, the definition of a "distant" foreign port is "any port not in North or Central America, the Caribbean, Bahamas, or Bermuda".

To go higher, a cargo ship needs to go deeper as well, so the channel would need to be deepened as well as raising the bridge. A cruise ship is mostly air. Oasis has a GT of 226,000, but only weighs (displacement) about 100,000 metric tons (plus passengers, luggage, booze and food). The largest container ship in the world has a GT of about 225,000 as well, and she weighs only about 60,000 metric tons, plus cargo. That cargo can weigh over 200,000 metric tons, so the container ship could load 2 Oasis class ships onboard and still float. That much weight means the container ship has to displace more water, therefore riding deeper in the water than a cruise ship (14-15 meters draft for the container ship vs 9.3 meters for Oasis). So, if you stack more weight on top of a container ship, it just sinks lower in the water.

The key improvement to the Key bridge will be to build large "islands" around each footing, so that a ship is stopped before it can contact the bridge structure, as they did with Florida's Sunshine Skyline bridge. The "dolphins" they placed in response to the Skyline bridge failure are a joke, and totally inadequate. They need to be increased in size as well as creating islands at the footings. The power line supports need increased protection as well. Going higher does not make the bridge safer from accidents like this.

The "reported" draft of a ship is the maximum draft. Most ships are required by their company's SMS code to have an underkeel clearance of about 3 meters so this channel may be adequate, depending on tides and the actual depth found. The posted depth of channel varies with time, increasing with dredging and decreasing due to silt/debris.

Not really, the limited width channel by the end of April will allow ships to transit the bridge site one at a time, with the Dali still there. To clear the whole channel will require stabilizing the Dali structurally, to get it able to move, and then clearing the wreckage around where she is now. And that work would be done with ships passing close by. Seems a reasonable estimate to me.

If you look at the photos of the Dali, you'll see that the bridge structure is about 1/3 back from the bow. Lots of container ships combine the engine room structure (and funnel) with the accommodation block and the bridge, to minimize the lost cargo space, but having the bridge aft increases the "blind spot" ahead of the ship, from looking over the container stacks, to somewhere close to half a mile or so. So larger ships are now moving the bridge to where the Dali's is. But whether the bridge is forward or aft, makes no difference to the height of the mast, which is the controlling factor. Ships like this must have two "mast head lights" both visible all around and vertically spaced so they can be seen one above the other from a distance, so even if you reduced the height of container stacks forward of the bridge, and then lowered the bridge to just see over, the after mast height still has to be higher than the container stacks aft.

Air drafts for ships are notoriously hard to find, but I would think a ship like Dali would have one about 170 feet. That would be about the maximum for the Key bridge.

Cruise ships are mostly air, and cargo ships consider air to be wasted volume. If you add a 10' high deck to a cruise ship, it will settle in the water maybe 2-3 inches, while if you add a 10' high layer of loaded containers to the top of a container ship, it will settle in a foot or more.

Cruise ships are a very small part of the $80 billion that the Port of Baltimore generates. And, from what I understand, many of the plans to "replace" the Bay Bridge are not to replace it at all, but to add additional lanes by building another bridge parallel to the two existing bridges, so making that bridge higher still will not solve the problem for cruise ships.

While heating a pool is not a health hazard, most ships only heat pools to about 75*F (24*C), unless they are intended to be a heated (therapy) pool.

Considering that ACL's new riverboats run about $40 million each, these were obtained at fire sale prices, and that they feel they will need massive investments to operate them to their standards.

While there is a "central" HVAC system that is not controlled by the cabin thermostat, the thermostat does control the cabin recirculation AC. The key slot controls a "set back" thermostat that raises the set temperature 5 or 10 degrees when there is no card in the slot. The lights that stay powered with no card in the slot, are the emergency lights in the cabin.

While not for RCI, part of my job was ADA compliance with NCL. There will be one and only one "relief station" on the ship, it will be used by any and all service dogs onboard. You are not allowed to leave the service animal unattended in the cabin for any time, and you won't be able to "hire" a crew member to watch him. Access on the pool deck is generally unlimited, but as you know, no entry into the pool. The "relief station" will be outside, in passenger areas.

Placement of the support piers also depends on the depth that bedrock is below the river bottom