chengkp75

As I've said above, virtually every cruise ship has sailed around for weeks at a time, every year, with one engine down for overhaul, and no one is the wiser, and no one is endangered. Similarly, I have sailed on a cruise ship that had one complete fin stabilizer removed because of damage, and the ship sailed for 4 years with only the starboard fin operating, and there was no real issue with rolling (there is never an issue with "stability" when a stabilizer doesn't work) until the next dry dock. Did the passengers notice that the fin was removed? Nope. Cruise ships make up less than 5% of all the ships crossing the oceans every day, and almost none of those other ships have more than one propeller (unlike cruise ships), nor more than one engine capable of driving that propeller (unlike cruise ships), and therefore having less "reliability" than a cruise ship, even one with an engine down, and yet they sail for years at a time with no problems. I can't address your own comfort level with choosing to cruise, but these are the simple facts about going to sea, and you may have likely sailed on several cruise ships that were experiencing "issues" with engines, and never knew about it.

This is a case of a customer service rep answering a question using a boilerplate answer sheet. The fine would be if this was a US based cruise, due to the US's cabotage laws. While the EU also has similar cabotage laws, unless the port prior to Majorca was also in Spain, there will be no fine or problem with EU laws. If the prior port is in Spain, there may be a cabotage problem, but whether there would be a fine or not, I can't say.

Compared to what I used to fly in with Bar Harbor Airlines, I don't consider the Hawaiian Airlines B-717 to be "small planes", but to each their own phobias (I know I've got my share).

As others have said, in order to cruise the Hawaiian Islands exclusively, the ship needs to be US flag. Currently, there is only one cruise ship that is US flag and positioned in Hawaii, NCL's Pride of America. While there are a few small US flag cruise lines, that operate smaller ships, none of them have itineraries that are Hawaii exclusive.

So, using the RCI Anthem example, if they said they had "routine engine maintenance" then you would have kept the cruise, but what would your decision have been if they said "we have one engine down for maintenance, and one out of service awaiting parts, but we have two engines fully operational"? How much transparency do you require?

If there were not maintenance being constantly done on the hundreds of pieces of equipment onboard, there would not be a need for the engineering department of 50-70 people. Yes, something is being maintained/repaired every single day. And, things like the diesel engines are maintained on running hours, not miles the ship has sailed, so maintenance is done at intervals like 250, 500, 1000, 2000 hours of running, and a complete overhaul is done every 12,000 hours. Given a cruise ship's typical usage, that equates to every 2.5 years. Think of getting a complete new engine in your car every 3 years. As I noted before, the Anthem situation that PinkT mentioned was caused by one engine being down for this routine maintenance (which can last for 4 weeks or more) and then another engine breaking down and requiring repair with a part not available. This is a fairly uncommon occurrence, but a bit more common post-Covid due to supply chain issues (like now aggravated by the Suez/Red Sea issues).

Do the airlines tell you what the exact reason is why your scheduled aircraft has been replaced with another aircraft at the last moment, causing a delay? Not in my experience, it is just a "due to a mechanical problem" explanation. Why should cruise lines be different? How many aircraft fly with deferred maintenance items? Quite a lot. Cruise ships are the same, except a cruise ship can perform the maintenance underway, while an aircraft cannot.

Medical evacuation from a ship at sea, if available, is done by national agencies, as it is considered SAR (Search and Rescue), and is done at no charge to the patient as prescribed by the UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea). If there is no nation that has agreed to provide SAR to a given region, or if the ship is out of range, then the ship will need to divert to a port, or closer to a SAR asset to get the patient off the ship. No ship in the world will allow, nor would any LifeFlight company agree to, make an evacuation from a moving ship at sea. Only military or para-military agencies (like coast guards) train for and assume the responsibility of doing evacuations from a ship at sea.

OP, you do know that the "medical evacuation" does not cover the evacuation from the ship? It is just from whatever shore medical facility you are disembarked to, back to a hospital of your choice in the US.

Considering the ship is not US flagged, the US Supreme Court has very little to say.

I suspect that one of the diesel engines is down for overhaul, and the ship cannot make the required speed for all ports. This is routine maintenance. The need to change the itinerary after it was sold, is possibly due to "technical" (the ship operation/maintenance department) not fully communicating with "sales" (who makes the itineraries), about an upcoming overhaul.

While the main shipping channel may be kept dredged (and on the Mississippi, that is tough)(I worked Miss River pushboats from NOLA to Paducah), the places where the river cruise boats pull up to the bank to "dock", or even public docks, may not be dredged that deep, or kept that way. And, while the Viking boats have a draft of 9', and in normal times most barges load to a draft of 9', the channel must be maintained to a deeper depth than that, as vessels must maintain a certain amount of "under keel clearance", normally for rivers to be 10-20% of the normal draft (or 1-2') both while underway, and while docked/moored as well.

Many, many cruise ships sail around with passengers onboard, and with one diesel engine completely torn down for overhaul, every year, and no one is the wiser. These overhauls take around 4 weeks to complete, so generally itineraries are set to not require the ship to make full speed (as the ship generally needs all diesel engines running to make full speed) to accommodate the overhaul. It is when things happen, like your Anthem situation, where one engine was down for maintenance, and a second engine went down for repair, that the itinerary needed to be adjusted due to reduced speed. However, even in that case, the "powers that be", in the form of the classification societies (the third party inspection services that are required by the "flag state", and give the ship her "certificate of seaworthiness", and the national maritime agencies in the various "port states" where the ship calls, have given their blessing to the ship being seaworthy, even with one or two engines down (the ship still has multiple engines available, which is more than 99% of the ships crossing the ocean). And whether or not a ship has stabilizers has no bearing on whether it is considered "seaworthy", as the initial stability calculations for the ship don't take into account the stabilizers, as they are a variable source of roll control, depending on ship speed, current, sea direction, etc.

Actually, "engine thrust" has nothing to do with stabilizer operation. Stabilizer operation is based on ship rolling motion. The ship needs to actually start rolling in one direction or the other, and the sensor detects this motion from the vertical, and sends a signal to the fins to oppose the roll. Stabilizers are not designed to, nor will they, stop a ship from rolling. Their designed function is to make the rolling slower (more time from one end of the roll to the other) to make it more comfortable. As far as reducing speed because of a stabilizer problem, this just doesn't make sense. The fin stabilizers act like airplane wings, so the faster the water flows over the fin, the more effective it is, therefore, slowing down causes the stabilizers to be less effective. At about 6 knots, the fins lose all effectiveness, and in most cases will automatically retract (this is a safety feature, in case they are accidentally not retracted when docking). As for the Apex being more sensitive to motion than other ships, the only way to compare two ships' motion is to have them both sailing in the same place, at the same time, in the same direction and speed. There are way too many variables otherwise to make comparisons otherwise.

Yes, at next dry dock it will be repaired. They will cut out the hull plating, frames, and deck behind the dent, and replace it all.

There is nothing to be concerned about. As I said before, there is nothing that I see in the photos that would affect the strength of the hull. As I said, the internal deck that is buckled for about a foot or so inboard, will be repaired and can be done (is likely done now) while in service. They may weld another plate over the damage, but that would only be for cosmetic reasons, and likely may not be done at all. Couple coats of paint, and it basically disappears.

As I said, ship's water can cause water retention, due to lack of magnesium or potassium (which you could get from bottled water or canned drinks), but not because of "desalination gone wrong" as the OP mentioned. If you had changed your eating habits to get more magnesium (salmon, almonds, spinach) or potassium (banana, avocado, spinach, carrots, cod), you might have found that continuing to drink ship's water would not result in swelling.

There are lots of stories out there about water retention due to "salty" desalinated water. They just aren't true, in my professional opinion. I drank desalinated water on ships for 180+ days a year for 46 years, and never experienced water retention, or swelling. Let me explain how the various methods of creating drinking water on ships happens. First, there is Reverse Osmosis. RO does not remove all minerals from the water, only those whose molecules are larger than the RO unit's pore size, and typically, a shipboard RO unit is alarmed when the fresh water reaches 20ppm of salinity, at which point the fresh water is diverted back to the ocean, until the salinity is corrected. Flash evaporation of sea water boils the seawater, so this does in fact remove all minerals from the water, since minerals don't boil into gas. The steam from the seawater is then condensed into "distilled water". A flash evaporator alarms and dumps production at 10ppm, and typically operates at 0-1ppm. Both RO (which is what is known in the maritime world as "desalinated") water and evaporated water do tend to be slightly acidic, to the detriment of the ship's piping system, so all water produced onboard is sent through a "re-mineralizer" (like your home), that adds calcium chloride (the active ingredient in common antacid tablets) to neutralize it. Most water retention is due to salt in the food, which passengers are eating 3 times a day, or lack of other minerals (potassium or magnesium), which are removed by both RO and evaporation. Also, some ships do not have sufficient time at sea (you cannot produce water from the ocean unless at least 12 miles from shore), or sufficient speed (more engine heat to make more water) to make all the water needed for the cruise, so water is loaded at ports. Many municipal water supplies, NYC and Miami are a couple that I know of, that have sodium contents higher than the 20ppm that comes from the ship's RO units.

It makes all the sense in the world, from a risk/reward viewpoint, which is how the cruise lines' insurers look at it. Are steamers a fire risk? Yes. Is the reward of not having this hazard onboard outweighed by having a few passengers upset about it? Also yes. Are hair appliances a fire risk? Yes. Is the reward of not having this fire hazard outweighed by the anger of nearly every woman passenger for not having their hair look good? Not by a long shot. So, the insurer sets premium to cover potential risk from hair appliances, but not to cover risk from steamers. And, thank you Biker, for the Resurrection post. Some threads around here probably need your dead horse post as well.

Just remember that maritime liens (for things like dockage, fuel, wages) can be claimed as "in rem" (against a thing, not a person or corporation), and so if there is not enough money to discharge all the maritime liens, then the "in rem" liens travel with the ship to the new owner.

While it has been in effect for years, it did change in extent and strictness for this season.

Nope. Gray water is waste water from sinks, showers, galleys and laundries. It is not used in toilets, primarily for just the reason you mention, having to run miles of additional piping. Sometimes, treated waste water is used for "technical" water (in engine systems) or in the garbage disposal system. On a ship, the toilet water supply branches right off the cold water supply to the rest of the bathroom, just like it does in your house. Vacuum toilets use only 1 liter of water per flush, compared to the 6 to 9 liters used in UK toilets, or the 6 to 26 liters used in US toilets.

No, it's not. It is, depending on the ship and the itinerary, a blend of Reverse Osmosis seawater, distilled seawater, and shore water. For the OP, yes, all ice is made onboard, from water either made onboard, or loaded in port.

Again, I'm not going to debate whether they knew about it, or when, but just the fact that there is a regulatory requirement to go slow, so the statement that it was a lie is not correct.

I'm not going to get involved in the discussion of what NCL did, or when they did it, or whether it was right or not, but I have to comment on this statement. The IAATO (International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators), of which NCL is a member, has adopted, for the 2023-2024 season (so recently), a voluntary 10 knot reduced speed zones around Antarctic areas in order to reduce whale strikes. So, this statement is not an untruth, but may have been not considered by NCL in time, or not passed to customers in a timely fashion.