chengkp75

Whether the operator has a valid ham radio license or not, that transceiver operating on the frequencies it does, comes under the ship's Radiotelephony certificate, and the Captain would need to be aware of the presence of the unit, and agree that it is acceptable to operate it under the ship's license. All communication equipment, even down to hand held radios must be listed on the certificate, with a few minor exceptions.

First off, surge protectors are not needed on ships. Where do the power "spikes" that trip a surge protector come from on land? Either lightning, or a blown pole transformer (don't recall from my time in Scotland whether they use pole transformers or not). Due to the ship's ground being separated from the hull of the ship (what would be "ground" or "earth" on land) to prevent electrolytic corrosion, lightning passes straight through the hull to the ocean, without interacting with the ship's electrical system at all. I have been on several ships that were struck by lightning, and we never had anything electrical, let alone electronic damaged. This includes the ship's navigation equipment, the engine room automation, radios, ship's computers, etc. The second thing is that the ship's "neutral" wire is not connected to "earth". If you take a voltmeter, and read between "hot" and "earth", on a ship, you get 110v (for a 220v outlet), not the 220v you have on land. Also, between "neutral" and "earth" it is also 110v (making 220v between hot and neutral). This is done so that equipment that develops a ground fault can be deteced, even if the ground fault is on the neutral side. These ground faults lead to electrolytic corrosion of the hull and fittings, and need to be repaired as quickly as possible. Now, suppose that a 440v motor goes to ground, that voltage is now on the "ground" connection, so the semi-conductors in the surge protector, that connect the hot and neutral to ground to "dump" the voltage, now see a continual voltage above what they are rated for in continuous service, and will fail. When they fail, they tend to go into "thermal runaway", overheat, and cause the power strip to melt and burn. That fire hazard is real, documented, and why they are not allowed.

The vast majority of Tripp Lite brand power strips are surge protected, and in the photo, I can see the small green lite labeled "protected", meaning it is surge protected.

No, its not. There is no issue with using a grounded extension cord, as long as it is not surge protected. The ground on the ship's outlets (and the 220v outlets have ground as well, in the two spring clips on the sides of the recessed outlet), works the same as the ground on land, to protect you from short circuits. The only device that interferes with the ship's electrical system is a surge protector, plain and simple. As for the razor outlet in the bath, as it shows in the photo, it is limited to 20va (or watts in simplistic terms), which means about 0.16 amp.

Yes. Hawaii does not have a "sales tax", they have a GET (General Excise Tax), the difference is that GET is charged on services as well as goods. For the OP, you will find that any purchases made on the ship, while it is within 3 miles of shore will be charged GET as well (shops, drinks, etc). Each night, when the ship gets outside the 3 mile limit, the bridge notifies the purser, and the POS registers are reset to not charge GET.

???????? Exactly.

Nowhere have I seen that the potential 45 vessels are all cruise ships. The shipyards build more than that, and the supplier supplies panels for all kinds of ships. Cruise ships account for about 5% of the world's ocean-going tonnage. Seatrade Cruise News states that the actual number of affected cruise ships is unknown.

To amplify Andy's comments. Virtually every space on a cruise ship has some form of fixed fire suppression system, either sprinklers (cabins, crew and public spaces), Hi-fog (engineering spaces), liquid refrigerant (galley hoods), steam (incinerator silos, laundry exhausts), or CO2 (engine spaces). Some of these are fire suppression (like sprinklers) and some are fire extinguishing systems. Having the fire suppression ability of an automatic sprinkler system (when the room gets to 135-165*F, the pellet melts, the water starts to flow, and there is no stopping it), allows for the response time of the firefighting crews. My teams, when I was working cruise ships, had about a 10 minute response time (alerted of the fire, race to their emergency gear locker, suit up in full gear including respirator, and report to on-scene command). Can most land fire services meet this, simply from a time and distance standpoint? To further explain what Hi-Fog (trade name, there are others), think of a drop of water that comes from your standard sprinkler head in a building (or in the cabin of a cruise ship), take that drop and divide it into 3000 droplets, and you have Hi-Fog. Think of the arches you walk through at sporting events or amusement parks, where a water mist is sprayed on you to cool you off. Again, Hi-Fog. Has the same effect on a fire, it cools it down by absorbing heat to boil the droplets to steam, and the mist does not interfere with firefighters or running electrical equipment. For the maritime industry, probably the greatest invention since canned Coke.

Yeah, if the cabins are integral with the ship, I can see using this type of "panel". But, the cruise ship modular cabins, and by extension they use the same panels for public spaces, are not structural, and really not attached to the ship by much, so the structural fire protection is sandwiched in the panel. Didn't see that Puroc offered anything other than a fibrous cover or aluminum foil type cover. But, then the panel manufacturer could add the steel/aluminum cover prior to delivery. I've gone through a lot of type approval "conversations", most recently with a rubber flooring tile that is used in the ECR in front of the main switchboard. USCG kept insisting that we add a di-electric rubber mat on top, until I got the type approval, and testing results from the manufacturer. Also ran into having our explosion-proof motors on a tanker that were CE approved, which does not meet USCG approval, and ended up changing out all the motors.

"Auto shutoff" on a heating device, of any sort, is the most frequently failed part of the appliance.

This is "external" fire insulation, the cabin wall panels use poured calcium silicate to fill the void between the metal skins, which forms a solid "rock-like" material. These are more like the Owens Corning "pink" insulation batts that you have in your house. On a ship, small wires are welded to the structural steel bulkheads (as opposed to the non-structural cabin walls), the insulation is placed over these wires which project through the insulation, and then a washer-like clip is pushed over the wire to hold the insulation in place. This is used, as I say, on the structural bulkheads and the structural overhead (the deck above), not in the cabin panels. This Paroc material is also used under some floating flooring applications on ships. The stuff on the overhead could be taken out by simply removing the cabin ceiling, which is relatively easy to do. The bulkheads are another matter. While there is always some space between a bulkhead and a cabin wall, how much space depends on the ship, and where on the ship, so access could be a problem.

When I first saw this brought up on other forums here, the word "panel" threw me. I assumed this was the cabin wall panels, which are two thin metal layers with a hard insulating material between. If these needed to be replaced, this is a major job (I've had to take cabins apart for plumbing repairs, and it definitely ain't easy. I looked at Paroc's marine products, and this is the type of fiber insulation, what I call "sheets" or "blankets" that are attached to things like the metal overhead panels, or studded to the steel bulkheads. While still a major job to renew, it is magnitudes less than the wall panels. As you say, class may simply require the addition of another layer of fire protection, leaving the original in place, but I think that wholesale renewal is not likely, and like you I think they will need to do tests on each vessel, unless they know when and why the certification failure happened, to narrow down the list of ships.

Trust me, I know how the cabins are put together, and have dismantled them to make repairs behind the walls. The cabin wall panels are what they are almost assuredly talking about, as these are the only fire rated panels used on ships. Whether the shipyard assembled the cabin (which as you say they don't), or whether a sub-contractor builds the cabins for delivery to the shipyard, makes no difference if the materials do not meet the requirements.

While the batteries would be considered essential, not sure the charger and wall unit (not sure what this is needed for) would be. Best bet would be to notify medical about your equipment soon upon embarking, and they may tag it, or at least note it on muster lists. Do you request to use the "special needs" muster station? There is always a nurse there.

Those panels would need to be replaced. If these are cabin wall panels, that would be a massive job.

If it is indeed a failure of the material to meet the fire code requirements, there would be a minute possibility that the affected ships would need to remove one panel for testing, and go from there. Even if the panels failed a fire test, unless it was by a significant amount, the only result would be a notation on the ship's class that the panels need to be renewed "as soon as practicable", usually mentioning during scheduled dry dock periods.

Yes, that is how it would happen, much like in the old sailing ship days, when the crew would climb out on the cathead (the spar that is over the anchor at the bow on either side) and hang their feet on one side and the business end over the other. As for vomiting, that is what the bilge pump is for.

There is a big blue bathroom surrounding the boat. Modesty goes out the window in a lifesaving situation.

Typically, the Pilot is giving orders to the tugs. Again, as I've stated, the Pilot will be talking with the ship's Captain and explaining what he intends to do, and if the Captain is not happy with that, they can either discuss it further and come to an agreement, or the Captain can relieve the Pilot, or he can decide to abort the docking. Unless the tug didn't follow an order, there is no "explaining" to do. Remember, that the tug Captain also has a responsibility for his vessel, and that outranks his responsibility to the ship.

If your question is who was physically touching the propulsion and thruster controls, it would have been either the Captain, or a bridge officer. Who was giving the commands to operate the controls would have been either the Pilot or the Captain, with the Captain having overriding authority to countermand the Pilot if he felt it necessary.

Unless he violated or ignored a procedure or policy for maneuvering the ship as outlined in the Princess ISM code, he would not be relieved of command. It is not the person who failed, it is the system that failed the person, by not providing the proper guidance and instruction. The system needs to be fixed, not the person.

No, we cannot "come to a preliminary conclusion", which I suspect from your comments is that the Captain is "to blame". However, as I've stated before, if the Captain was following all outlined procedures and policies from the ISM, then he is not to blame, but the ISM needs to be amended to cover the circumstances that were present at the time of the incident. Without knowing the root cause of the incident, we cannot make any conclusions.

So, what you are proposing is that every cruise, the muster station for each and every cabin is reallocated to a different lifeboat based on weight and height? How do you reconcile this with the required placard on the cabin door, that would have to be changed every cruise? And, what happens if the total weight of pax and crew exceeds the rated weight limit of all lifesaving appliances? Do you kick someone off the ship at the last moment "sorry, we're over our weight limit"? And, what about passengers that don't use a passport?

Regardless of who is "at fault", the ship is responsible for all damages that it causes. Particularly in the case of an allision, just like a moving car is always responsible for damages when it hits a stationary car. Even in a case of force majeure, the ship is responsible.

On today's cruise ships, the lifeboat capacity is somewhere above the "nominal" passenger capacity (double occupancy). So, when ships sail very full, some pax will be assigned to rafts, and all crew, with the exception of the 3 assigned to each lifeboat as crew, will use rafts. For cold weather, the rafts have an inflatable floor to provide some insulation. But, just like in the lifeboats, "huddling" is the best defense against the cold. If you are wet, that makes it very much more difficult to maintain body temperature, which is why it is not recommended to jump into the water in the hope of getting into a boat/raft, unless there is no other alternative. The davit launched rafts load the crew at the boat deck, and they ride down in the raft just like in a lifeboat. The MES (evacuation chute) type of rafts drop you into one of a nest of rafts, and you transfer dry there as well. From my own personal experience, which included 4 hours in a liferaft at sea offshore Halifax in March, with a 6 foot swell running, the raft is no less survivable than the boat, but it is far less comfortable. As for cold weather cruises, read up on the Prinsendam rescue here: https://www.mycg.uscg.mil/News/Article/3009282/the-long-blue-line-prinsendamcoast-guards-miracle-rescue-over-40-years-ago/ Note that it took the USCG nearly 8 hours before the first rescue helicopter got to the scene, and it took 10 hours to get everyone out of the boats, and if not for the fortuitous proximity of the tanker Williamsburgh, where the rescued were staged, it would have taken many hours longer.