chengkp75

Real ID has nothing to do with international travel. Since you are from Michigan, you could get the Enhanced driver's license (has a US flag on it, not the star of a Real ID), and this would be sufficient for the cruise. Or you could get a passport, but I'm assuming you don't want to do this. Otherwise, with your driver's license (Real ID or not), and a birth certificate you can cruise. With the Enhanced DL you don't need the birth certificate.

Except for the guys who handle lines, where a standard "gang" for a ship is 6 people, and only 4 ever show up, the other two rotating who gets paid for not showing up. Or the "designated sleepers" you always find onboard, tucked away in corners, in a "nest" they built when they first came on their shift, and will sleep the entire shift, because they just finished another shift on another ship. If ship's crew try to wake them, the entire gang will walk off the ship, stopping cargo operations. Please. While longshoring can be nasty when the weather turns bad, it is not a strenuous job at all these days.

I'll admit that the boss has to frequently pull me back from entering crew spaces to get from one place to another, as I know it is quicker through the crew spaces! Don't think that would go over big with surveillance.

But, as a mariner as well as a cruiser, I see this as just another regulation that the cruise lines will need to adjust to. As I said in another thread, this is just like the Ballast Water Management Convention. Cruise ships used to keep ballast water in their few ballast tanks (mostly anti-roll tanks) on a near permanent basis, but since this was originally sea water, it had the potential for continued marine growth while in the tank, and therefore the potential for discharge of invasive species if the tanks need to be emptied. Now, they mostly use treated effluent from the waste water system as ballast. You evolve, and adapt. The cruise lines will just have to adapt into more regular underwater inspections and cleanings, to make this a less intrusive procedure. Adapt and overcome. Here in Maine, we have a very strict policy regarding recreational boats bringing in Milfoil from out of state. This can choke off the oxygen levels in the lakes and lead to algae blooms. We also have a ban on out of state firewood, as this can bring a destructive beetle into the state. Having worked my entire career in an increasingly regulated industry, I support the steps taken to protect the environment, no matter how much of a pain in the butt it made my every working day.

Oh, Jim. Don't tell me you violated USPH requirements regarding ice machines? By restricting access to the machines, they guarantee that the scoops are used, and then hung up on the machine and not left laying inside the ice bin.

Unfortunately, this is a byproduct of the DSC (daily service charge) culture on cruise ships. It allows the cruise lines to hire or promote first line supervisors that have no personnel management experience or training, and give them no training, and push the "management" onto the front line workers who must "peer police" themselves in order to obtain the maximum DSC available. HR and supervisor training is virtually non-existent on cruise ships.

Except that most longshore contracts stipulate a full pension after only 20 years. And, from what I recall, if they work more than 8 hours a day, they get more than one day's credit towards pension, so the 20 years is usually less than 20 years.

Sorry, but any public pier (owned by the city, county, or state), whether leased to another entity, anywhere in the US uses unionized longshoremen. This has been this way for decades. Only companies that actually own their own piers (like refineries) can get away without unionized labor. As such, anything that is transported over the pier (from a truck, car, or bus to a ship, or vice versa), must be handled by a union longshoreman, or a strike would result (as it has in the past, many times). Again, I have worked with longshoremen for decades, including when working cruise ships, and they are all unionized members of the longshore union. One aspect of unions that many may not understand is that they stand for equal pay for equal jobs. Whether you are moving shipping containers on/off a ship, or slinging baggage for a cruise ship, you are merely a member of a longshore team that works a dock, and as such, you get the same pay. Now, whether or not there is seniority pay (and believe me, there is) is another base belief of unions, and as I noted, the senior longshoremen tend to take the cruise ship jobs as they are easy work, just a few hours work for an entire shift's pay, and are mostly indoors. Port Canaveral is unionized under the ILA.

As these are unionized jobs, job descriptions and pay scales are generally not public information. Here is an article that takes data from the West Coast union itself, and is 7 years old: https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/dock-workers-union-demands-hurt-consumers/ Here's another article that states that over 200 longshoremen in NY/NJ make more than $400k, and the top earners $600k. https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-international-longshoremens-association-waterfront-racial-segregation-20220321-mfw36ebtcfdxnnuqlroo7cjqxu-story.html

While this is true, every longshoreman in every port in the US are members of one of two unions, which set pretty high wage and fairly consistent levels, regardless of the port. What varies more by port is the number of jobs available, and the number of hours available.

Actually, the cruise terminal longshoremen are typically the most senior ones in the port, as the pay is good (tips) and the work is light. But, there are no cruise ships in port every day at many ports, so these men will work cargo ships on days there are no cruise ships, or do you think they only work part time? As for being a dangerous job as the other poster stated, as someone who has dealt with longshoremen for 46 years, while it was dangerous when I started out, it has become quite safe, but some of the junior workers will have to work in all kinds of weather. It is far more automated than it was 40+ years ago. I won't get into the discussion about tipping or not, but I will clear up a lot of misconceptions about the porters work. While the porter that takes your bag at the curb only handles your bag once, the bag is handled several times before it gets on the ship. The ship does not scan the bags onboard, they do not have the space or equipment to do this. The bags are placed on a trolley (whether the same type as the ship's trolleys or not), and then taken into the terminal, where they are taken off the trolley, sent through the scanner, and then placed on a ship's trolley. This trolley is then taken by forklift to the ship's side and loaded onboard. The ship barely has enough space to store the trolleys as they are loaded, let alone take all the bags off and send through a scanner and then reload for distribution to the various decks.

It isn't clear to me in what order the cruises are, and where a "round trip Alaska" starts from. Sorry if I'm a bit dense.

What exactly is your itinerary, and what ship? You may be getting a call in a few months.

That will be the aft mooring station.

If his decision was within the policies and procedures of RCI's ISM Code (International Safety Management), then the Captain has "overriding authority" by international law to make decisions regarding safety of the ship, passengers, crew, and environment. This means that no one, regardless of place in the corporate ladder has the authority to question his decision, and if his decision was according to the ISM, no discipline would be given. If the company feels that the procedure needs revision in light of this incident, they will revise the ISM. ISM uses the more progressive "root cause" analysis basis of incident investigation, not the regressive "blame culture".

Then don't insult my intelligence by equating humanitarian aid with cruising. So, they receive a "subsidy" by not paying wages and taxes, and not hiring US citizens, and then should be granted a further subsidy (bailout) just like companies that do pay US taxes and hire US citizens and pay wages that stay in the US to aid our economy? Nike makes shoes in China, because they would go out of business trying to do it in the US, so should they have been considered for subsidy money?

Was that the one down in NZ?

The government didn't stop them from doing business, just from doing business in the US. The fact that the rest of the world agreed is what caused the cruise lines' difficulties. If the cruise lines wanted assistance from the US government, they should have flagged their ships in the US. So, you equate humanitarian aid to cruising? Wow.

Yep. Though the number of ships that have been scrapped has little effect on the scrap price (it is driven by the value the steel mill places on the steel), the current price in Turkey is $240/long ton (displacement, not gross tonnage), so Serenity would go for about $4.8 million on the scrap market, nowhere near the purchase price.

Since there are no reports of massive breakage or any injuries, I'm assuming that the ship slowed before turning, and also did not perform a "hard over" (full helm) turn, but a pool that high up the ship would experience a whole lot of free surface effect, creating a "tidal wave" from the pool. Any 180* turn, even at 10 or 12 knots would cause the pool to overflow. No, the Captain would not require permission, as ISM grants him/her "overriding authority" to make decisions regarding safety. Fuel consumption is not really a factor, the time frame is too short to make any appreciable difference.

While this is true for most vessels, with a passenger ship, the typical man overboard procedure is to slow the ship down and then turn. A sharp, full helm turn at speed causes a lot of "turn induced heeling", which has been known to damage things on the ship (anything not bolted down) and cause significant injuries to guests. And, with today's ECDIS navigation systems, the need to keep a man overboard in sight is no longer as important. The navigation officer can poke a button on the ECDIS (electronic chart display) to mark the position at the time the sighting was made, and then the ship can return to that spot exactly, without the need for a sharp Williamson type turn.

Okay, a bit of anti-fouling 101. Most ships use a "soft" or ablative type of bottom paint. The paint has a toxin in it that kills any marine organism that attaches to the paint. The movement of the ship through the water causes the dead marine growth to slough off. After a time, the toxin in the outermost part of the paint is exhausted, so growth could happen. To combat this, the paint is ablative, meaning that over time the outer microns of paint are worn off by the friction of the ship moving through the water, so fresh paint with more toxins are presented as the surface to keep killing growth. Now, in an area or situation where there is little water movement, like a ship at anchor for a long time, there is no ablation of exhausted paint, so you get marine growth attaching. A ship that sits at anchor a lot, or an offshore oil rig that doesn't move at all, does better with a "hard" bottom paint, that does not need to have water motion to ablate the surface, the hardness of the paint film helps prevent the marine organisms from attaching in the first place. So, you've got a cruise ship that moves through the water for most of its service, so you want a "self-polishing" or ablative bottom paint as the best choice, but that cruise ship also has sea chests that are designed to slow or still water flow, so this should have a hard bottom paint. Since the hull surface is hundreds of times the surface area of the sea chests, the entire ship gets painted with the ablative paint, and the sea chests suffer from low water velocity, and foul more quickly than the hull surface. A common sight in a diver's inspection of the ship's bottom, is "grass" (seaweed) growing at the sea chest gratings, but nowhere else on the hull, due to the difference in water velocity.

While you will be close to land for Panama and Suez Canal transits, the cruises that get you there will typically be far out to sea. A Panama Canal cruise to or from New Orleans or Miami, will cross the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, and have days when you are out of sight of land. Similarly, a cruise across the Med to Suez will be out of sight of land. OP says that the ship must be in sight of land all the time during the day, that limits things dramatically.

Here is a good drawing of what a sea chest is: https://www.quora.com/On-a-ship-or-boat-what-is-a-sea-chest And, here's what it looks like on the outside: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fcommercialdiving.com.au%2Fship-underwater-maintenance%2F&psig=AOvVaw2FF6EUbqJBkRf44ibKdLYX&ust=1672938166378000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CA8QjRxqFwoTCIiM9LmyrvwCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAE Basically, a sea chest is an enclosed box attached inside the hull, with a grating on the outside that allows it to flood with sea water. The sea chest then has a pipe attached that leads the sea water to the sea water cooling system of the ship, or the ballast system, or both, depending on design. It creates a volume of water that is "still" compared to the water flowing past the ship's hull while moving, and therefore a more controlled suction for the sea water pumps.

Then, I would expect a dive inspection sometime within the 30 day window, and then the ship will need to decide what to do after the results of that inspection. Three months after painting, I would expect her to be clean, but there may be some small areas that need attention.