Why can't ships stay at dock?

[Johnc3211]

While surfing on Cruisemapper.com I see ships at port and at sea near ports. In a day or so they seem to change places. I thought I read on an older post once that cruise ships do not hook up to shore power. I have no clue of the economics of shutting down and starting up a ship. I understand there is reduced crew on board. Would it be better to fill a couple of ships with those crew people and just keep the minimum number of ship moving? I know the Panorama is ferrying crew home. Just curious!!!

[jperry2011]

10 minutes ago, Johnc3211 said:

While surfing on Cruisemapper.com I see ships at port and at sea near ports. In a day or so they seem to change places. I thought I read on an older post once that cruise ships do not hook up to shore power. I have no clue of the economics of shutting down and starting up a ship. I understand there is reduced crew on board. Would it be better to fill a couple of ships with those crew people and just keep the minimum number of ship moving? I know the Panorama is ferrying crew home. Just curious!!!

My understanding of it is that some ports and or cities are throwing a fit about the ships being there... not sure why.

They probably have to keep the ships running at low level power atleast and keep some maintenance personnel onboard.. but that's a guess.

[MommytoAsquared]

Great question - Just speculating.  Do the ships have to pay some sort of "rent" when they are taking up dock space?  

 

As to why they seem to anchor near a dock, then move...No idea?  I wonder if the Coast Guard requires them to move every so often?

[navybankerteacher]

In normal times, cruise ships pay thousands of dollars per day to be alongside a pier.   These fees cover amortizing the land acquisition and construction costs of the port facility, the ongoing maintenance and staffing costs — and, probably,  some net profit to the community.   There are obviously more ships than the berthing space to accommodate them all, so it would be absurd to contemplate one ship occupying a berth indefinitely.   There are probably also fees (likely much less) for anchoring in a harbor, so it makes sense for ships to rotate - while allowing them to take advantage of fueling, fresh water, and possibly electric power, from the pier.

[mammajamma2013]

2 minutes ago, navybankerteacher said:

In normal times, cruise ships pay thousands of dollars per day to be alongside a pier.   These fees cover amortizing the land acquisition and construction costs of the port facility, the ongoing maintenance and staffing costs — and, probably,  some net profit to the community.   There are obviously more ships than the berthing space to accommodate them all, so it would be absurd to contemplate one ship occupying a berth indefinitely.   There are probably also fees (likely much less) for anchoring in a harbor, so it makes sense for ships to rotate - while allowing them to take advantage of fueling, fresh water, and possibly electric power, from the pier.

i thought I had read where Chengkp51 stated that the ships go out to sea to maufacture water and offload gray water among other things. Then they come into port to load food and other supplies. I hope i got that right.

 

And I agree with you - there are probably reduced fees for anchoring in a harbor.

[Hlitner]

Many of the cruise ships are anchored in charted anchorages in a few spots between Florida and the Bahamas.  The ships can thus avoid paying expensive docking fees.    Just a look at the current AIS chart shows there are a few cruise ships docked at both the Port of Miami and Port Everglades.  But the majority of ships are scattered in various anchorages towards the Bahamas.  They do not generally anchor in harbors since there is more safety being further from land in anchorages that are outside of the main shipping lanes.   It is interesting to see that there are some anchorages favored by specific cruise lines.  For example, there are several MSC ships anchored south of Bimini while several HAL and Princess ships are anchored in the Great Isaac Anchorage located between Bimini and Grand Bahamas Island,   There are also quite a few ships anchored just West of Great Harbour Cay.  You might also consider that for a ship to anchor they need a safe area with a relatively shallow bottom that can be reached by an anchor.  Otherwise they would have to drift and maintain position using power.

 

Hank

[rkacruiser]

2 hours ago, Hlitner said:

It is interesting to see that there are some anchorages favored by specific cruise lines.  For example, there are several MSC ships anchored south of Bimini while several HAL and Princess ships are anchored in the Great Isaac Anchorage located between Bimini and Grand Bahamas Island,   There are also quite a few ships anchored just West of Great Harbour Cay.  

 

I have never gotten the geography of the Bahamas clear in my mind.  The different islands compounded by the names of the different cruise line island resorts:  I simply find it confusing.  For MSC, I think the site their ships are anchored are either at or near their newly opened Ocean Cay.  Not sure of it though!

[Hlitner]

18 minutes ago, rkacruiser said:

 

I have never gotten the geography of the Bahamas clear in my mind.  The different islands compounded by the names of the different cruise line island resorts:  I simply find it confusing.  For MSC, I think the site their ships are anchored are either at or near their newly opened Ocean Cay.  Not sure of it though!

Yeah, it is not that far to Ocean Cay.  We were actually at that place in December and MSC has done an amazing job developing that small island/sandbar.  But it can only dock 1 ship and only in good sea/wind conditions.  The MSC Preziosa has been docked there for a few days.  I would guess that they are using the island as a nice respite for the crew that remains on the vessel.

 

Hank

[rkacruiser]

Just now, Hlitner said:

Yeah, it is not that far to Ocean Cay.  We were actually at that place in December and MSC has done an amazing job developing that small island/sandbar.  But it can only dock 1 ship and only in good sea/wind conditions.  The MSC Preziosa has been docked there for a few days.

 

Hank

 

I was there in January on MSC Meraviglia.  Really liked the island.  For MSC, this hiatus in sailings ought to allow them the time to continue to develop Ocean Cay into a cruise line private island that could rival those of HAL and Princess.  The YC tram driver who drove us around the island said that development of a water park was being considered.  If so, wouldn't that help to compete with NCL and RCCL?   

 

 

[Hlitner]

1 hour ago, rkacruiser said:

 

I was there in January on MSC Meraviglia.  Really liked the island.  For MSC, this hiatus in sailings ought to allow them the time to continue to develop Ocean Cay into a cruise line private island that could rival those of HAL and Princess.  The YC tram driver who drove us around the island said that development of a water park was being considered.  If so, wouldn't that help to compete with NCL and RCCL?   

 

 

I cannot help but wonder what this COVID-19 is doing to MSC's financials.  Unlike the other major cruise companies, MSC is a private entity (owned by a single family) that can keep much of their financial info under the radar.   This virus has hit them at a bad time since the company is in the midst of an expansion program with about 2 new builds per year.  The family does have very deep pockets but I guess its a legitimate question to wonder "how deep?"

 

This year we had 2 long cruises on Princess and another 30 day cruise on HAL..plus a short 14 days on MSC.  HAL cancelled that first cruise (Asia in April) and we recently cancelled our August Princess cruise.  Our next cruise is a 28 day October cruise on Princess and will likely be cancelled by us or the cruise line.  But MSC is simply a Caribbean cruise in December where we love the YC and hardly bother getting off the ship.  My thinking is that the MSC cruise will be the only one that we might be able to do this year.  What we liked about that MSC itinerary is that we get two days at Ocean Cay where we do get off the ship :).  As to the other ports in the Caribbean, we have often found that the best part of the port is to stay on the vessel :).  We think that the YC is the best value in cruising.

 

Hank

[chengkp75]

As others have noted, you pay dock fees for every day your ship is at the dock.  There are no fees for anchoring.  Ships will only come into port to pick up supplies or fuel.  They will move around at sea every once in a while to make water (you have to be 12 miles from shore) or to discharge waste water or bilge water.

 

The main reasons the ships tend to anchor in the Bahamas are two fold:  one, there is a lot of good holding ground in the Bahamas, as opposed to offshore Florida, and two, you are in Bahamian waters, and not subject to CDC restrictions.

 

As for MSC, remember, they are a major shipping company (second largest in the world), with 480 container ships, including the 4 largest in the world and revenues of $28 billion.  The cruise portion of their fleet is a small part.

[rkacruiser]

29 minutes ago, Hlitner said:

What we liked about that MSC itinerary is that we get two days at Ocean Cay where we do get off the ship :).  As to the other ports in the Caribbean, we have often found that the best part of the port is to stay on the vessel :).  We think that the YC is the best value in cruising.

 

I found Ocean Cay to be "different" from the other private island ports.  Maybe that was because I was a YC guest.  I enjoyed the Ocean House experience.  (Suggestion:  that venue needs to be expanded; a bit crowded when I was there.)  Even if I wasn't a YC guest:  I saw potential that would put Half Moon Cay and Princess Cays in the rear view mirror if such potential was fulfilled.  YC's value in cruising?  If one wants that style of cruising, I agree.  That is one of the reasons I booked it.   

[coevan]

59 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

As others have noted, you pay dock fees for every day your ship is at the dock.  There are no fees for anchoring.  Ships will only come into port to pick up supplies or fuel.  They will move around at sea every once in a while to make water (you have to be 12 miles from shore) or to discharge waste water or bilge water.

 

The main reasons the ships tend to anchor in the Bahamas are two fold:  one, there is a lot of good holding ground in the Bahamas, as opposed to offshore Florida, and two, you are in Bahamian waters, and not subject to CDC restrictions.

 

As for MSC, remember, they are a major shipping company (second largest in the world), with 480 container ships, including the 4 largest in the world and revenues of $28 billion.  The cruise portion of their fleet is a small part.

 

 

I could not imagine 1000' ships plugging in a 50 amp shore power. 😁 If i remember form our ship's tour, the ship is completely self sufficient. 

[chengkp75]

8 minutes ago, coevan said:

 

 

I could not imagine 1000' ships plugging in a 50 amp shore power. 😁 If i remember form our ship's tour, the ship is completely self sufficient. 

No, they don't plug into a 50 amp shore power, but in California, they are required to plug into shore power.  The ship uses 10,000 volt power, and would be capable of drawing about 8Mw, or 800 amps at 10k volts.

[mammajamma2013]

1 hour ago, chengkp75 said:

As others have noted...

I apologize for misspelling your name. That's what happens when I rely on my memory!

[navybankerteacher]

45 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

No, they don't plug into a 50 amp shore power, but in California, they are required to plug into shore power.  The ship uses 10,000 volt power, and would be capable of drawing about 8Mw, or 800 amps at 10k volts.

I was wondering about the shore power - do ports in Florida, New York, etc. permit long term running of ships’ generators?

[chengkp75]

9 minutes ago, navybankerteacher said:

I was wondering about the shore power - do ports in Florida, New York, etc. permit long term running of ships’ generators?

Yes.  Halifax is the only port on the East Coast, with the exception of the Brooklyn cruise terminal, that have shore power connections.  Nor do any US Gulf Coast ports have it.  Cargo ships are easier to provide power for, it is typically only 480 volts, and at most 2Mw for a container ship with it's own cranes (not many), or less than 1Mw for a tanker or container ship without cranes.  Any ships within the North American ECA (within 200 miles of the North American shoreline), must either burn low sulfur diesel fuel, or use a scrubber on the exhaust.

[Tapi]

2 hours ago, Hlitner said:

I cannot help but wonder what this COVID-19 is doing to MSC's financials. 

My guess is that they are doing better than all other cruise lines. MSC is a huge cargo company, and the cruise division is only a small part of their business. As long as their cargo division remains healthy, I guess that they’ll fare this pandemic better than most if not all other cruise lines. 

[Hlitner]

2 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

No, they don't plug into a 50 amp shore power, but in California, they are required to plug into shore power.  The ship uses 10,000 volt power, and would be capable of drawing about 8Mw, or 800 amps at 10k volts.

An amusing story but we were on the Regent Princess when she was using a new shore-based power source at a European port.  We were sitting in the Atrium having coffee around mid-morning when, without any warning, there was a massive power failure on our ship.  Everything went out except for some emergency lighting.  All the elevators failed and we were all wondering what had happened.  Within a few short minutes most of the lighting was restored.  It was really not a biggie since we were docked and most passengers were already off the ship for their port day.  Those stuck in the elevators were quickly rescued and life went on.....or so we thought.  The surge had wiped out some of the ship's current computer files (there were back-ups of most important files) which caused all kinds of problems for the rest of our voyage.  

 

What happened?  Apparently there was a surge in power from shoreside and the ships systems did what they were programmed to do which was sever the connection to protect the ship from any serious damage.  But, in this case the ship's own power supply could not come online in an instant so much of the ship immediately shut down.  It took several days until the IT folks could get most of the WiFi and computer systems back and a lot of the ship's internal accounting system crashed.  Fortunately, we had a pretty long "crossing" which gave the ship's engineers time to gradually get most of the systems up and running.  In the end it was a minor inconvenience to the passengers and a major inconvenience to the ship's engineering department.  

 

I only mention this, because these shore based power connections are a lot more then "50 Amp" shore power and involve very sophisticated systems (both shoreside and on the ship).  But sometimes things go wrong and if the shoreside folks are the ones to screw up, it is the ship that pays the price.   I imagine that Chief Engineers and Captains would prefer to keep things in-house.

 

Hank

[MBP&O2/O]

As long as the anchored ships remember to weigh anchor every so often😀

 

I remember once we were at anchor off a port in the Arabian Gulf. Waiting times for a berth were up to six months. One ship, having been told the pilot was on his way tried to weigh and found that they couldn’t as the anchor had sunk so far into the sea bottom.

Oops! 
In a similar vein ...  one ship that again had been at anchor for several months. Someone had managed to obtain a full size, replica, human skeleton. One day when the Port Authority boat was doing its 'rounds', all personnel were moved out of sight and the skeleton was draped over the bridge wing wearing nothing but a cap - and that was the only sign off occupancy that were seen by the staff on the boat. Rumour was they were not amused!

[jan-n-john]

I've often wondered about MSC's finances.  While the family is certainly rich today, my impression is they do most of their capitalization by leasing, e.g. their container ships and containers. And in spite of the fact that they have far more cargo ships than cruise ships, cargo ships are very cheap by comparison, and have a  ready resale market, so I have to believe the cruise side accounts for a major part of their capital program. Being that they are private, I can't imagine the banks would give them the money needed to build those cruise ships without big covenants to substitute for the lack of a public equity base.  In short, I wouldn't just assume they are stronger and better placed to weather this than, say, the RCL's of the world.  

Edited April 30, 2020 by jan-n-john

[jan-n-john]

On 4/28/2020 at 9:20 PM, chengkp75 said:

  Any ships within the North American ECA (within 200 miles of the North American shoreline), must either burn low sulfur diesel fuel, or use a scrubber on the exhaust.

 

I'm curious to better understand what that means from a worldwide perspective.  Are the new rules about cruise ship air pollution significantly different  (weaker) in the rest of the world? I thought MARPOL got into the picture here so it's not just a US thing.  Since cruise ships must comply within the US ECA, does that mean that they don't once they are elsewhere? Does ship age affect any of this?

 

And from a health perspective, do the new rules (how low is the sulfur, how good is the scrubbing) effectively control ship pollution to start with?

[chengkp75]

14 minutes ago, jan-n-john said:

 

I'm curious to better understand what that means from a worldwide perspective.  Are the new rules about cruise ship air pollution significantly different  (weaker) in the rest of the world? I thought MARPOL got into the picture here so it's not just a US thing.  Since cruise ships must comply within the US ECA, does that mean that they don't once they are elsewhere? Does ship age affect any of this?

 

And from a health perspective, do the new rules (how low is the sulfur, how good is the scrubbing) effectively control ship pollution to start with?

The rules are not new, they came into effect back in 2013, and they apply to every ship, not just cruise ships.  Cruise ships account for about 5% of the world's shipping, so they are a minor segment.  The ECA is a part of MARPOL Annex VI, dealing with air pollution, as are the other ECA's in the Baltic, North Sea, and Arctic regions.  The EU also has rules about ships burning low sulfur fuel while in EU ports.  Outside of ECA's ships must comply with MARPOL on worldwide sulfur limits in fuel.  Up until January 1 this year, worldwide sulfur limits for fuel were 3.5%, but are now 0.5% (an 86% reduction in sulfur).  Within ECA's, the sulfur content cannot be more than 0.1%.  Scrubbers can be used to continue to burn higher sulfur fuel, now the 0.5% limit, as long as the resultant emissions are the same as if the ship were burning 0.1% fuel.  So, ships are allowed to switch fuel when entering/leaving ECA's and burn the higher sulfur fuel without a scrubber in most areas of the world.

 

So, the new worldwide rules, as well as the ECA rules reduce sulfur emissions significantly (before January, the ECA lowered sulfur emissions by 97% in ECA's, and the new rules lower worldwide sulfur by 86%).  Scrubbers take the sulfur out of the air, and can discharge it into the open ocean after treatment, and there is some debate as to whether this is just as harmful as the previous air pollution, but at the moment it is legal.  The biggest problem, and one that has not been determined yet, due to the short time since January, and now the world oil glut, is whether the refineries can produce sufficient low sulfur fuel oil (0.5% sulfur) to meet world shipping demand, and whether the resultant drop in price for high sulfur fuel oil (ships can no longer use it), will drive power plants in emerging countries to switch to this cheaper fuel over less environmentally but more costly fuel options and allow this higher sulfur fuel to be burned in a less regulated industry.

[CruiserBruce]

30 minutes ago, jan-n-john said:

 

I'm curious to better understand what that means from a worldwide perspective.  Are the new rules about cruise ship air pollution significantly different  (weaker) in the rest of the world? I thought MARPOL got into the picture here so it's not just a US thing.  Since cruise ships must comply within the US ECA, does that mean that they don't once they are elsewhere? Does ship age affect any of this?

 

And from a health perspective, do the new rules (how low is the sulfur, how good is the scrubbing) effectively control ship pollution to start with?

Europe has many similar restrictions on fuels and air pollution for cruise ships as the US.

[chengkp75]

54 minutes ago, jan-n-john said:

I've often wondered about MSC's finances.  While the family is certainly rich today, my impression is they do most of their capitalization by leasing, e.g. their container ships and containers. And in spite of the fact that they have far more cargo ships than cruise ships, cargo ships are very cheap by comparison, and have a  ready resale market, so I have to believe the cruise side accounts for a major part of their capital program. Being that they are private, I can't imagine the banks would give them the money needed to build those cruise ships without big covenants to substitute for the lack of a public equity base.  In short, I wouldn't just assume they are stronger and better placed to weather this than, say, the RCL's of the world.  

The vast majority of cargo ships are not "owned" by the line that operates them, they are typically leased, on a "bareboat charter" from a shell corporation that owns only that one ship, and is either wholly owned by the owners of the shipping line, or owned by a combination of the shipping line and the shipyard that built it.  This shifts liability away from the parent shipping company.

 

And, the majority of MSC's cruise ships only run about 3-4 times what the latest container ship has cost.  With only 23 cruise ships and nearly 500 container ships, the cruise line still is only a small part of their assets.