Keep those Ships Sailing

[chengkp75]

30 minutes ago, ew101 said:

I was thinking of your favorite rant, the crews stuck on ships who cannot get home.  But yes the term "free port" is most related to trade restrictions.  

Crew changes are far easier these days than at the height of the pandemic.  There is an index of crew who are onboard over their contracts, and that is trending down, and is at 7.1% worldwide.  The major problem now is that countries require crew to be vaccinated, and crew are at the 40% level now, but with cruise ship crew of course much ahead of that.  Some nationalities of crew are seeing more difficulties than others, especially Chinese.

[Earthworm Jim]

On 12/28/2021 at 9:14 AM, 1025cruise said:

Unfortunately, Cruises to Nowhere from a US port are not permitted. 

 

Cruises to Alaska without a foreign (realistically meaning Canadian in that case) port of call weren't allowed either, until they changed the rules.

 

(Acknowledging that as pointed out "allowed" isn't technically correct, but it's effectively accurate the way cruise ships operate)

 

But in the Alaska case the federal government had motivation to help Alaska's economy. They have much less motivation to help the economy of Caribbean nations. Though one could argue they might want to benefit Puerto Rico and the USVI.   

[AmazedByCruising]

2 hours ago, chengkp75 said:

The major problem now is that countries require crew to be vaccinated, and crew are at the 40% level now

 

Why hasn't that been taken care of? 

[chengkp75]

15 minutes ago, AmazedByCruising said:

 

Why hasn't that been taken care of? 

By whom?  How?  Where?  The home countries like the Philippines are at only about 49% vaccinated, based on the number of doses administered.  India has a vaccine shortage, and data shows that 14% of Indian mariners have had one dose, and about 1% have two.  Not all countries are as forthcoming with providing vaccines for foreigners as the US is with ship's crews, in fact, only a handful do.  Some countries prioritize getting the most number of first inoculations done, so the second dose, needed for crew, are not a priority.

 

The International Chamber of Shipping has said that mariners cannot be forced to take the vaccine, and there is considerable vaccine hesitancy in places like the Philippines.  This, along with ports requiring vaccinated crew, can lead to a "no jab, no job" policy amongst shipowners, which would only exacerbate the mariner shortage.

Edited December 29, 2021 by chengkp75

[AmazedByCruising]

33 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

By whom?  How?  Where?  The home countries like the Philippines are at only about 49% vaccinated, based on the number of doses administered.  India has a vaccine shortage, and data shows that 14% of Indian mariners have had one dose, and about 1% have two.  Not all countries are as forthcoming with providing vaccines for foreigners as the US is with ship's crews, in fact, only a handful do.  Some countries prioritize getting the most number of first inoculations done, so the second dose, needed for crew, are not a priority.

 

The International Chamber of Shipping has said that mariners cannot be forced to take the vaccine, and there is considerable vaccine hesitancy in places like the Philippines.  This, along with ports requiring vaccinated crew, can lead to a "no jab, no job" policy amongst shipowners, which would only exacerbate the mariner shortage.

 

Yes, crew simply not wanting a vaccination is of course a problem, and I do believe that you should not force people to have a medical procedure if they don't want to, for whatever reason. But you can tell them that this is their last contract unless they do get vaccinated and that's totally fair. 

 

Holland and Belgium are part of the handful of countries that vaccinate crew, so that's most ships arriving in Europe, and the US is covered as well as you say. That's more than 40%.

 

And even then.. it's not a necessity that countries supply the vaccines. Ship owners can make arrangements themselves with Pfizer, just like they buy food or fuel or OTC medicines. IMHO it's lousy management to have a ship worth millions, with cargo worth a multitude of that, with a zillion pages of procedures about oil levels and pirates, and then sort of forget that the crew might get sick. 

 

[chengkp75]

40 minutes ago, AmazedByCruising said:

And even then.. it's not a necessity that countries supply the vaccines. Ship owners can make arrangements themselves with Pfizer, just like they buy food or fuel or OTC medicines. IMHO it's lousy management to have a ship worth millions, with cargo worth a multitude of that, with a zillion pages of procedures about oil levels and pirates, and then sort of forget that the crew might get sick

Some shipowners do purchase vaccines, but the problem comes with getting the crew vaccinated before they join the ship, since most shipowners do not have offices in all the countries where crew comes from, they rely on agents,  and those local agents will have to rely on local health care system to get the vaccines administered.  Cruise ships are lucky that they can assign pax cabins as crew quarantine cabins for joining crew, and have food service crew to deliver meals, etc.  Cargo ships will have maybe one or two single cabins over the required number of crew, and a total steward's department of 3, so if you could get a crew member to the ship (foreign travel restrictions), most ships don't have the ability to have crew quarantine for a couple weeks while the vaccine takes hold.

 

But what happens when your experienced crew or officers won't take the vaccine, and you fire them, and for tankers you have vettings by the customers that require a certain amount of experience with the company and with the type of vessel?  A lack of "qualified" officers can result in loss of the charter (no business for the ship).

Edited December 29, 2021 by chengkp75

[ready2cruzagain]

With looking at some of the ships right now, Casino and restaurants closed, no shows, missing ports. No thanks. The ports we never go off the ship and that would be okay but Restaurants (specialty and then the Pride of America just said no breakfast or lunch in the MDR) and Casinos closed and no entertainment, forget it. I am not paying thousands of dollars to sail around the ocean wearing a mask with no entertainment and limited restaurants.