chengkp75

The only morning northbound train from Portland is at 11:25, getting into Freeport at 11:55. Then the southbound trains leave Freeport at 1:08pm or 5:58pm, getting into Portland at 1:43pm or 6:33pm. The train station is about 3.2 miles from the cruise terminal, or about a 10 minute cab ride. About an hour walk each way. I don't know your port schedule, but it looks like you would be spending an hour on the train (30 minutes each way), for an hour's stay in Freeport. Unless you absolutely gotta get to Bean's for some quick shopping, I wouldn't do it.

But, the pilot is not on duty while the ship is outside of Vancouver Island, or in many areas of Alaska waters that are not restricted waterways. That is a transportation cost with the pilots, since there are no acceptable pilot stations in the southern panhandle of Alaska. There are different payment schedules for simple transportation of the pilot and for his "bridge watch" hours. Going inside Vancouver Island would also require the Alaska pilot to be transported from Vancouver (based out of Port Angeles), but would also require the Canadian pilot to remain onboard, and on duty for the entire transit inside, up to the north end of Vancouver Island.

To the best of my knowledge, no necropsy has ever been performed on a whale/ship strike victim to determine whether there is an underlying cause for the whale to get in the way of a ship. Yes, the ship strike may have killed the whale, but was it terminally ill already?

So, you think that stabilizers were to blame for this? You do know that stabilizers do not stop rolling, nor even reduce the amount of rolling much, they merely slow the rolling motion down to a more comfortable level. And, what were the relative weather conditions in your two case points, including sea direction and wind direction relative to ship's course, along with current direction and strength, and water depth? This is not uncommon when propellers or thrusters are being used in the shallow waters at docking, especially when they are being used hard to counter the environmental factors of currents and wind. What were the environmental differences between the previous ship's docking and yours? Was the other ship on the other side of the dock from the Magic? Which direction was the wind, relative to the direction of the dock? This makes a huge difference in how the ship handles, whether the ship is being pushed away from the dock by the wind, or being pushed into the dock. Was the Magic on the "inside" of the "L" of the dock, or outside? All of these factors play far more into whether the ship could dock, than a propulsion problem. Did any of these "seasoned cruisers" have any maritime background? Otherwise, I'd discount whatever they said about "sounds" as worthless. Sorry, I don't have a dog in the fight, as I've never sailed on Carnival, but none of your claims make much sense from a "mechanical issue" standpoint, and sound far more like what Carnival said, it was weather.

So, if a $100 GMRS radio works so well, why is it that the cruise line invests in $700+ UHF radios and repeaters on their ships?

The ships definitely go outside the 12 nm limit when sailing between islands (the distances are so short, that it is easy to get outside 12 nm and still make the morning arrival). Federal law prohibits any vessel that starts and ends its voyage in Hawaii from having any gambling. Since the foreign flag ships don't make closed loop cruises in Hawaii, they can have an open casino. Prior to NCL having the US flag ships in Hawaii, the Norwegian Star was doing closed loop cruises, with a port call at Fanning Island, Republic of Kuribati, and had the casino onboard permanently sealed and shut.

But, of course there are, but the radio has to be set to the proper frequency to access the repeater. This is how the crew get their radios to work. And, yes, anything over 5 watts has to be listed on the ship's Radiotelephony Certificate, so approval from the Master would be required.

There will be several hundred sub-contractors who will live on the ship, so crew will be needed to clean the cabins, make and serve the meals, and clean the laundry for these folks. Other crew will be used as "clean up" gangs to allow the sub-contractors to concentrate on their jobs, and not need to waste time on daily clean up, debris removal, or furniture replacement. Finally, some crew will be assigned as "fire watch", assigned to various locations around the ship where the shipyard workers are performing "hot work" (oxy-acetylene cutting and welding), where the crew standby at the work site, and all adjacent spaces, checking that no sparks or heat catch anything on fire, and extinguishing any that happen.

The first two reports (the mandatory clearance report, and the 2% report) are not made public, but the 3% report is published as an "update" report. The 2% report has to list the remediation methods the ship is using, and the 3% report has to list changes to the methods since the infection rate is still increasing, and triggers a review by the USPH of the remediation methods, and possibly the dispatch of a team to inspect remediation procedures. They are still reported on the CDC website. Many folks thought the only time noro was reported was at the 3% level, but this is not correct. I can't remember a single cruise of the roughly 140 week long cruises I worked, where there wasn't a single case of GI illness that was reported. The two RCI ships reporting "updates" in 2023 have just over 3% cases reported, and are in the "monitoring" status, while Ruby Princess, at 6% has had a team dispatched to investigate.

A major reason for excluding the southern Inside Passage (Vancouver Island) is the pilotage fee, which generally runs around $10k+ for a cruise ship.

One misleading fact, the Gemini states the number of ports/countries, etc, for the entire 3 year cruise, which you must sign up for, while stating the fare for just one year. So, to compare apples to apples, the Gemini fare is $90k.

A large reason for increasing the size of these ships is the decision to go to methanol fuel. Methanol only provides about 35-40% of the energy that an equivalent volume of diesel fuel, or residual fuel will provide, so the ship needs twice the tank volume to have enough fuel to move the ship for its cruises. Additionally, methanol tanks are required to have void tanks surrounding them, with leakage detection systems (unlike conventional fuels), so the volume requirements and cost merely to store the methanol onboard goes even higher. Since the hull volume needs to increase to handle the fuel storage issue, the topsides (hotel) benefits by gaining volume as well.

Cause will always be listed as "unknown" until tests confirm that it is or is not noro. While the ships have onboard testing kits, the results are not perfect, so CDC typically wants a lab test to confirm. Ships report at 0% (they have to report every time the ship returns to the US, whether any GI illness has been reported or not). Then, they have to report if 2% of pax and crew report GI illness, and again at 3%.

Nothing new in the fact that hand sanitizers don't work against noro. And, just to be precise, neither does soap and water. All soap is, is a lubricant that breaks the surface tension (combined with the friction of rubbing the hands together) between the outer layer of skin cells (dead) and the underlying skin, and allows the water to wash these cells, and any bacteria or viruses away, without killing them. As for Benzalkonium Chloride, yes it will kill noro, but it needs between 1-2 hours of contact time to do so. That means the hands need to be wetted with BAC for that entire contact time to work. Even the package of "Wet Ones" posted above advertises them as "anti-bacterial" and not "anti-viral".

NCL officially, or crew scuttlebutt? Huh?

I've seen no information as to why the ship would be "banned" from the inside passage, but not from Vancouver, or anywhere in North America, for that matter.

They've been hiding drugs and things in aerosol cans for decades.

They can definitely smell through tin foil. About the only thing a dog can't smell through is a hermetically sealed glass jar.

If that wasn't someone from engineering, I'd take the statement with a grain of salt. Most of the energy used to make water onboard is "waste heat" that would be discharged overboard as heated salt water if not used to make fresh water. As even the smaller Disney ships will use 5000-7000 tons of water per week, there is almost no way that the ship can load that much water during turn-around (3 2.5" fire hoses running at capacity would require about 24 hours to fill up the ship. Also, any water taken on in port, must be segregated from the ship's supply, and not used, until a coliform bacteria test comes back negative, and that takes 24 hours. Ships generally top up tanks in port only if the itinerary does not allow enough time, at a good steaming speed (the more power the ship uses, the more waste heat is available to make water), to make all the water needed for the week.

Sales tax is charged until the ship is outside state waters (3 nm), not when it reaches international waters (12 nm). When I worked the NCL Hawaii ships, the bridge would call down to the Purser's office and notify them of when we left state waters, and the POS registers were reprogrammed to stop adding GET (Hawaii uses GET not sales tax). Yes, not only beverage package drinks, but any purchase made onboard while inside the 3 mile limit (specialty dining, shops, spa) will be charged GET. GET varies by county (island), from 4% in Maui, to 4.5% in the other islands.

Other cruise lines push bottled water because the passengers want it. Long before they started selling it themselves, they were allowing it to be brought onboard.

Unless it takes on water in ports (which is limited due to costs), every cruise ship provides "RO-quality drinking water" throughout the ship for free. The water from every sink tap, shower head, ice maker, soda gun, or water dispenser on the ship gets water that is either made by RO, or is distilled from sea water. While I agree that plastic water bottles are a scourge, touting RO water as a green initiative (when all ships use them to one extent or another), is false, as there are better ways to produce better (from a purity standpoint) water with less energy (green house gas) consumption to make it.

It doesn't matter whether it is medically prescribed. The ships fall under the laws of the flag state, not the country where the passenger is from, and further, they are restricted by the IMO's regulations on dangerous drugs. Just as some nations will limit or ban certain drugs regardless of whether prescribed by a doctor (and that doctor has no license to practice in their country), even nations like Holland, where marijuana is "decriminalized", it is banned on ships that fly their flag, as the WHO and IMO still consider it to be a dangerous drug, and the ships must meet these requirements. Very similar to the last couple of years, folks asking if paxlovid was available on cruise ships, it would depend on the approval of the drug by the flag state, under whose auspices the doctors onboard operate, not the country where the passenger is from.

The Star isn't really comparable to the Sky, but the Sun is her sister ship. As the PP noted, the Spinnaker Lounge is on deck 11, forward, and has panoramic windows for viewing, was always a favorite of pax when I worked her. The library on deck 6 is always a quiet spot. The Great Outdoor Cafe on 11, is under an awning, so a good place to enjoy being outside, between meal hours, with a bar handy. Deck 12 outside, forward, around the kid's splash pool (kids never seemed to find this) was an area for quiet lounging. This was 15 years ago, but the ship hasn't changed, but maybe the demographics have.

As someone who lives in a 200 year old wood frame house that backs up to about 40 acres of woodland, and who has had both mice and rats in the house (have an annual contract with pest service), nothing in the photo looks like rodent debris to me. Another factor is that on a ship, unlike a house where rodents can roam freely up walls to multiple floors, there are very few ways for rodents to move from deck to deck (it is all steel or concrete fillers). I mention this, because it has been my experience that you will only see rodents on ships near food sources, and passenger cabin decks are not a good source of food. That material looks like the calcium silicate insulation from inside the wall panels (which are only 1/2-3/4" thick, with steel on both sides). It looks like the steel wall panel has corroded, and allowed the insulation, which has broken down over the years of vibration, to fall out.