chengkp75

Unfortunately, unworking toilets are not uncommon on cruise ships, and three days, while a long time, is not out of reason. Since it is reported that other cabins have the same problem, the blockage has moved down the system. Just like your house, the waste system keeps adding toilets as it travels down the ship. Your toilet will join with those surrounding it, then join with others on the same deck a little further away, and then with cabins above and below you, and if the blockage stops up the pipe anywhere between your toilet and the vacuum pumps in the engine room, you and everyone else "upstream" of the blockage will be without a toilet. This is why "giving an inside cabin across from your cabin would likely not work, as that cabin almost certainly doesn't have a working toilet either. And, as the OP says, they may have abided by the proper use of the toilet, but not everyone does. A difficulty of marine vacuum toilet systems, is that unlike your home's sanitary system, which continues to get bigger as it goes down (from the 1.5" sink drain or the 4" toilet drain to the 6" main sewer line leaving the house, to the 24" sewer line in the street, and so on, the vacuum toilet system is 2" even when connected to 200 toilets. This causes problems when someone flushes something down the toilet that doesn't belong there. I remember one time, when someone flushed what appeared to be (from the debris we collected in the roto-rooter) a bath towel down the toilet. This managed to move down to a section of piping that was particularly difficult to access with the rooter, and it took us 2 days to grind the towel up enough to unblock the pipe, and about 100 cabins were without toilets during this time. We were working around the clock on this, but it was the hardest blockage I've seen in 45 years at sea. I don't comment on customer service or compensation aspects, as that is not my area of expertise, but unfortunately stopped up toilets are a thing to live with on a cruise ship, as long as people are a-holes.

Or would care. Not for a noon fix, but for shooting stars at twilight, the more accurate celestial navigation position finding method.

And, yet, mariners have coped with wind on the bridge wings (most ships don't have enclosed wings), and the motion of the ship to make sun and star sights for centuries. And, remember, it can't be that dark out, you need to see the horizon as well as the star. That's why its called "navigational twilight".

However, they can invoke an "innkeeper's lien" and seize the customer's baggage and hold it until the bill is paid. As Paul notes, this is considered theft, and if they wish to pursue criminal charges, then they need to notify local law enforcement. Otherwise, it is a civil debt, and you cannot be detained for a civil debt.

I was a cadet on a freighter that carried 12 passengers (all seniors), and the Captain was trying to impress one of the women (husband was onboard, but that didn't seem to matter). So, one evening, the Second Mate (navigator), the Deck Cadet, and the Chief Mate (studying for his Captain's license) were all taking star shots. The Captain came to the bridge, with the woman, and decided he would shoot stars as well. Quite the huddle around the chart table, and the two Mates and the Cadet plotted positions within a half mile of each other. The Captain's plot was 6 miles out, but he grandly announced that his was the correct position, we were off course, and ordered a course change. Needless to say, at the next day's noon sights, we were really off course, and the Mates had to correct the course, but fudge the chart to mislead the Captain. That was my first ship, and I have lots of stories about the goings on there, but that's for a different forum.

When I mention sight tables like HO214, HO229, or HO249 to cadets these days, they look at me like I have two heads. I learned celestial using HO214 and a slide rule, but these days, you can take a calculator into the license exam for sight reductions. Interesting bit of history, each entry in the volumes of sight tables (tens of thousands) was hand calculated by out of work mathematicians, hired by the US's WPA during the depression.

Not completely sure what you're asking, but regardless of where the ship is flagged, that flag state would have to approve the color, and it would have to be submitted to IMO for approval. Disney ships are not flagged in US.

Actually, yellow boats were around before Disney cruises. But Disney wanted a specific shade of yellow, and they did not go to the USCG, they went to the Bahamian Maritime Authority, who appealed to the IMO for acceptance. USCG really cannot say anything about what a foreign flag ship does as long as the flag state and IMO says it meets SOLAS.

For at least the first couple of days, there will likely be some smooth rolling, as the ship is crossing the California current, which runs north to south.

Nearly all the walls and ceilings in the cabins on every ship are steel. It is a matter of how thick the vinyl coating (think industrial wallpaper) they put on the steel is, and how strong your magnets are. Likely if the above poster had used rare earth magnets, they would have found they work everywhere in the cabin. It is just how much trouble you want to go to.

Quite a lot of cruise ships carry two different fuels these days, one for use in ECA's and one for outside. They feel it is cheaper and less likely to cause problems like this to go this way over scrubbers. For years, ships had to switch to low sulfur diesel when docked in EU ports, even if the ship had scrubbers, so carrying two fuels is common.

The ship's carpenters or the fitters in the engine room should be able to come up with a cut off mop handle, or 1" PVC pipe section. Ask guest services, and maybe a tenner to the guy who delivers it (he made it).

If that is the case, then in fact the engine could be run without the scrubber working, they would just have to use a more expensive fuel.

And the cruise ships have nothing in common with the FDA. It would require paxlovid to be approved in the flag state, not the US.

If you look at the size of a trim tab in comparison to the size of the boat, both length and weight, and then extrapolate that for a cruise ship, you get an enormous appendage sticking out the back of the ship (about 40 feet or more). That would lead to larger port fees (longer berth). Putting motors in the tails to operate them requires access to service and maintain them, and they would need to be very large, or you have ugly hydraulic cylinders attached between the aft dining room windows. And, the force to dampen rolling is limited, as the center of the tabs is close to the center of the ship, so little moment arm. You would also have to have these flapping up and down to counteract rolling. If you mean to minimize listing or heeling instead of rolling, again, the force from anything less than an enormous tab would do nothing. Not following you about air flow.

Archimedes never said that a submerged object, either fully or partially, "pushes up". Any object, when either partially submerged (ship) or fully submerged, pushes down with the force of gravity. It is the water that is displaced by submerging the object, that is trying to re-occupy the space of the object, that pushes up. But let's let that go. The duck tail almost never goes more than a few inches into the water. The closest analogy I can think of is a trim tab on a speed boat. Do you know what I mean? The little flaps on the back of a boat that can be hinged up and down by hydraulic cylinders to force the bow back into the water. Their area is miniscule compared to the waterplane of the boat, yet their effect is great in adjusting the trim of the boat and forcing the bow back into the water. They are just flat metal, no air space in them, yet they act to depress the water (forcing down) behind the boat, and the "equal and opposite reaction" is to force the stern up, lowering the bow. The duck tail is similar, merely extending the flat area behind the propellers to increase the down force on the water. The only reason the duck tail is not just a flat piece of metal like a trim tab is structural, at it's size, it needs to be reinforced, so a box girder shape is stronger than a flat sheet (think of a cardboard box holds up more weight than a sheet of cardboard).

Not really. The "hull form" is what is under the waterline. Stability does not depend on the shape of the ship above the waterline. The "duck tail" is nearly 100% above the waterline, and doesn't affect the volume displaced (changing the center of buoyancy). Changing the center of buoyancy moves the "metacenter", which is the point that the center of buoyancy rotates around when the ship rolls or pitches. "GM" is the distance from this "metacenter" to the center of gravity. While a duck tail does is provide a small amount of additional waterplane area when the stern goes down in pitching, the amount of change to the waterplane area is very small compared to the upright waterplane area (900 foot long hull, 10 foot duck tail). What the duck tail really does is provide an additional air volume that the ship is trying to submerge when the stern pitches down, and that air volume creates more buoyancy. But, the duck tail never really goes underwater to change the amount of buoyancy, it just makes it harder for the rest of the stern of the ship from going down deeper.

Stability is "Ship stability is the ability of a ship to float in an upright position and, if inclined under action of an external force, to return to this position after the external force has ceased acting." Therefore stability does not care how much a ship pitches or rolls, it cares about the ability of the ship to return to upright from that pitching and rolling. A duck tail or a flared bow are more akin to roll stabilizer fins or tanks, that seek to dampen the pitching, but do not affect the ability of the ship to generate righting moment. This is a common misconception with non-mariners, thinking that a "stable" ship does not roll, when in fact the more stable a ship is, the more uncomfortable the rolling is (snap rolling). The most comfortable ship to be on in a seaway is a loaded single hull tanker, that has virtually no "GM", the measure of a ship's stability, as this ship will roll very slowly, and likely "hang" at the end of the roll (to one side or the other) before "deciding" (by eventually building righting moment) to return to upright. These rolls can be measured in minutes from one side to another, unlike a cruise ship that typically rolls in less than a minute.

A "duck tail" or stern sponson is never "needed" for stability. It is added to provide reserve buoyancy to reduce pitching, just as the "flare" of the bow section above the waterline does the same thing, but doesn't do anything for stability.

Jade was the Pride of Hawaii when built, and the Sky went to Pride of Aloha, and then back to Sky. That was part of the deal with Congress when NCL America took over the partially built hull of Pride of America. They could flag in an existing foreign built ship, and also flag in a foreign built newbuild, and have all of them be PVSA compliant.

Since the engineers in the ECR have a monitor for the surveillance cameras, I had to keep on top of whether they were paying attention to the plant, or watching the "free shows" or zooming in on passengers walking off the gangway.

No, it means that state tax (about 4-5%) is added to any purchase made on the ship while in port. Whether you have a beverage package or not, or purchase something in the store, or a specialty coffee or whatever. Once the ship leaves the 3 mile limit, the POS registers are reset to not charge state sales tax.

And the crew will focus the bridge wing cameras on your balcony and get some adult entertainment.

And look how much profit the Navy makes. Most of that on the Navy, and on commercial ships as well, is known to be a waste of money, and is done just to keep the crew busy. Many ship owners (fair enough, not cruise ship lines, as they care more for cosmetics) don't even stock paint on the ship, as they know it is just money thrown away, and they get far better for their money when the paint is completely gone over in shipyard every 2.5 years.

So, you think it would be money well spent to grind off the gel coat on the lifeboats and apply a new gel coat just to change the color? That's not paint. Huh? If they are doing a drydock now, that is not a statutory docking, and does not give them "credit" towards the docking due in 2024, which is the 15 year survey. There is only a six month window where a docking can be done ahead of time and get credit for it.