chengkp75

Virtually no ship afloat today would be converted to using LNG, even for gas turbine engines. This would require either large (for QM2, very large) cylindrical LNG storage tanks on deck, or a complete gutting and rebuilding of the engine spaces and the double bottom area of the ship to accommodate the cryogenic LNG tanks and their associated inerting and re-liquifaction equipment. It just would not be economically feasible.

I believe that is to exit the Canal's traffic separation scheme, go around the Canal anchorages, and then enter the Colon traffic separation scheme.

Actually, since a class action suit against NCL a couple of decades ago, what is contained in the "port fees and taxes" line is closely limited. Secondly, the Canal no longer sets tariffs according to the number of berths on passenger ships. They now use the "Panama Canal/Universal Measurement System" which is close to Net Tonnage for the vessel, for the "capacity" portion of the tariff.

You do know that Fincantieri owns 50% of Chantiers?

And, you were told this was caused by the wrong toilet paper by the guys who actually cleared the clog? Anyone else literally doesn't know ****. I've cleared more clogs than most cruisers have days at sea, and I've never seen one by just toilet paper. While this is 100% correct, it does not apply to types of toilet paper. Toilet paper is toilet paper. Wipes are manufactured differently than facial or toilet tissue. No, its not. You are doing what most folks do, and confusing "marine" toilet paper, designed for boats, with their macerator/holding tank systems, cruise ship toilet paper is not "designed" to do anything that "regular" toilet paper doesn't, since it is regular toilet paper.

Again, the "type" or "brand" of toilet paper has nothing to do with how the sewage is processed on the ship.

In 46 years of working on vacuum toilet systems, I've never seen a toilet clog due to "improper" toilet paper. This is a long time, cruise ship urban myth. Officers are generally told to say that the toilet paper is "special" in order to reinforce the concept of nothing other than toilet paper going into the toilets. I also live on a septic system at my two houses. We use whatever toilet paper is available, or on sale, and never had a problem. The major difference between a land based septic system and the shipboard system, is the amount of time the sewage is in the process tank. Because at home, the amount of water flowing through the septic tank is not great, the bacteria has time to start to digest the paper fibers. Since the ship's system flows over 40 tons/hour, there is no time to even try to digest the paper fibers, so the system is designed to remove them chemical/mechanically and process them separately. The vacuum system needs to have the "product" from the toilet maintain some "cohesiveness" in order to carry down the pipes (and in some cases up the pipes), which the toilet paper provides. The paper the cruise lines use is the cheapest they can get, since the ship goes through pallet loads every week.

Doubt it. Her bottom survey is not due until Oct 2024.

And, again, because no other cause could be determined, it was assumed that the Star Princess fire was started by a cigarette, even though a Princess supplied towel (which was also assumed to be the seat of the fire) could not be ignited with a cigarette under laboratory conditions. I don't condone smoking on balconies, but the risk of fire is at the bottom of my concerns, as someone who has trained for, and fought, shipboard fires for decades.

The morgue on cruise ships is really only 4 refrigerated drawers. Frequently used to store crew drug test samples, or noro samples. And, there was a case recently where the ship's morgue was not operating, and they did place the corpse in a walk-in fridge (after removing all food stuffs), but I've been on a couple of cargo ships where a body was placed in the walk-in freezer (and there is only one or two) with the crew's food for many days until port was reached.

Infrared flame detector. Due to the wind on balconies, smoke and heat detectors don't work too well, so they go with the flame detectors. The sprinkler head provides heat detection, as the thermal bulb blows out at around 135*F. And, if you look closely enough, the photo above is of the exact same sensor as the OP's photo.

I'm surprised that as an attorney, you didn't know that nearly everything onboard a foreign flag cruise ship is under the laws of the "flag state" and not the "port state". Even when docked in a port in the US, US laws and "protections" do not apply, for the most part. The overlap of jurisdiction between "port state" and "flag state" is a very large gray area, but the simplest definition, as used in the US, is that unless the "safety or well being of the port state" are involved, then the "flag state's" laws apply on the ship, even when docked. SCOTUS has found that even such things as the ADA, since the act does not specifically mention foreign flag cruise ships, does not completely apply, even for cruises that home port in the US. I am not an attorney, certainly not an admiralty lawyer, but after 4 decades of working at sea, you get a layman's handle on "international" law.

Sounds a lot like cruise ship DSC, doesn't it?

There is no difference in basic wiring between ships or lines. It all depends on whether there is a ground fault anywhere on the ship that affects the circuit in your cabin, which will determine whether the Dyson product works or not.

According to the class society database, Radiance is due for dry dock Nov '24.

The Courageous was holed in the engine room spaces, no inert gas there, for obvious reasons. Fire in the engineering spaces on a ship can frequently lead to total loss of power, and hence eliminate the ability to fight a fire. Not sure what suppression systems the ship had, or what was deployed, but that is likely why they abandoned ship. The Altair, again, shows that the inert gas system was working, as I noted above, keeping the fire from spreading to other tanks, and also keeping the fire limited to the area of the side of the tank where oil was leaking out from, and not on the top of the oil in the tank. Again, not certain of what measures were employed, or whether they abandoned ship or were advised to do so by the Navy. The Courageous would have had CO2 smothering in the engine room, and that would have extinguished the fire, but it would also have resulted in complete loss of power (engines don't run on CO2). The Altair had firefighting foam that could have been sprayed to run down the side of the ship, but again, don't know whether they used this until exhausted or not.

Well, she'll need a dry dock in April 2024, but if you're asking about the one after that, January 2026 would be a little early for the next docking. They will give you about 3 months ahead, so January is just outside that window. It's possible, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

Actually, the video is of the Front Altair on fire. Both the Front Altair and the Kokuka Courageous were attacked at the same time with limpet mines, and both caught fire, but only the Altair had damage to her cargo tanks. The Altair is a 109,000 dwt crude oil tanker. Both tankers had crews of about 23. The limpet mines used weighed 42 kg (90 lbs). According to US military video, Iranian vessels were seen near the two tankers, and the two limpet mines on the Courageous, only one of which detonated, were attached a few meters above the waterline, so were not delivered by swimmers.

Depends on what they are shooting with. A US Stinger or Russian Grail missile are great equalizers.

I've never seen that statistic before, and I have my doubts about it. Oasis class has 20% more installed generating power, and the azipods are one frame size larger than Freedom class azipods, so again about 20% larger. I don't think you can push that much more weight through the water for less fuel. They may use less fuel per ton than Freedom, but not less fuel overall.

Yep, considering the only thing separating that fire from the rest of the crude oil cargo is 3/4" plate steel (a real good thermal conductor), yes, the IG is doing it's job very well, limiting fire to leakage from the breached tank. The fact that the deck above that tank has not burned through also shows that the IG blanket is being maintained in that tank as well, and only the oil that has leaked out is burning. The first thing the engineers would do if a cargo tank is breached, whether by act of war or accident, is to fire up the IG generator and start topping up the IG, since losing cargo out the tank means more atmosphere volume is created, and you want to keep that inerted.

Deck 6 cabins are on the same level as deck 6 atrium. Deck 6A is accessible from deck 7 down some stairs, or up some stairs from deck 6, both only at the aft end of deck 6A. Deck 7 cabins are up a ramp from the deck 7 atrium. What cabin is the OP in? Because the deck 6 cabins, 6001-6009 and 6201-6210 have elevator access. It is the deck 6A that has no elevator service, cabins 6010-6024, 6101-6109, 6211-6225, and 6301-6311. From the comment about only a few cabins, I think they are on deck 6, not 6A. Running down the center of deck 6 are some crew cabins. If a guest booked on deck 6A had mobility issues, we normally issued a pass to use the crew elevator, which does stop at 6A.

Thinking harder on it, I remember that for instance, if deck 5,6, and 7 are 12' high aft of the forward elevators, that is 36' total height. Say cabin deck heights are 8', then there is room for 4 decks of cabins where there are only 3 decks of public spaces.

Having worked on the Sky (sister ship) for a few years, I can tell you why. Everything aft of that deck, on decks 5 and 7 are "overheight" public spaces (i.e. taller than cabin decks), so they inserted deck 6 cabins in between. You'll note that on deck 7, there is a ramp up to the cabins, since they are "shorter" than the spaces in the atrium and aft of it. So, the cabins on deck 7 are higher than the rest of deck 7, and the cabins on deck 5 are shorter than the rest of deck 5, so there was space for another deck of cabins in between. Considering the Sun and Sky were built in 2000, not really "old time design", and actually a good engineering use of the available space to insert more paying cabins.

Those tanks are all inerted with low oxygen stack gas to ensure a non-combustible atmosphere. This has been required on all tankers since 1974.