Muster Drill

[UPNYGuy]

14 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

They never have.  SOLAS requires that 75% of "all souls" be accommodated in fixed lifeboats, but the ship has to have 125% of "all souls" capacity of boats and rafts.  The crew have always been assigned to rafts.  The only crew that get into the lifeboats are the 3 assigned as crew of the boat (up to 16 for boats like the Oasis has).

 

 

this seems to be a common thought that all pax are accommodated in the boats, and not the rafts. 

Edited February 14, 2023 by UPNYGuy

[chengkp75]

6 minutes ago, UPNYGuy said:

 

 

this seems to be a common thought that all pax are accommodated in the boats, and not the rafts. 

Typically, up to 100% passenger capacity, all passengers are accommodated in the boats.  Look at Oasis.  Her double occupancy is 5606 passengers.  Her 18 lifeboats hold 354 passengers (370 capacity minus the 16 crew), for a total of 6372 passengers in boats.  Her maximum passenger capacity is 6699, so even somewhat above double occupancy, all passengers are in the boats.

 

Adding in the 2181 crew to the 6699 max passenger capacity, gives a maximum "all souls" of 8880.  The 370x18 lifeboat capacity (6660) is exactly 75% of "all souls".  So, until Oasis gets to a booking level of 114% occupancy, all passengers will be in boats.

[ProgRockCruiser]

1 hour ago, chengkp75 said:

This is a common misconception that cruise passengers have.  It actually reads, from your quote:  "30 min from the time the abandon ship signal is given after all persons have been assembled, with life jackets donned."  (bolding and underlining, mine).  Now, first off, the "passenger muster" signal is not the "abandon ship" signal.  It is the "fire and general emergency" signal, after which the passengers are directed to go to their muster stations.  Now, the muster is taken, waiting for everyone to show up, and put their lifejacket on, then everyone waits.  Only if the emergency gets out of control, and the Captain decides that the passengers should evacuate, will a PA announcement to "board the boats" be given.  This is when the clock starts ticking, for your 30 minutes, but be aware that not all boats are loaded at the same time, nor lowered and released at the same time, so the 30 minutes is for each boat.  In other words, if you are in the third boat called from your indoor muster station to get into the boat, only when they call you does your 30 minutes start.

OK, thanks for clarifying.  The original BBC article seemed to imply (or I inferred) the way I incorrectly stated.  What you say makes much more sense.

 

1 hour ago, chengkp75 said:

See the comments about the studies of the Concordia sinking, and how that is the worst case scenario, and it still took over an hour.

Well, yeah, that's considered a worst case scenario, but I was alluding to what truly could be a worst case scenario where damage is, um, inflicted in a strategic manner, intentionally or not, such that it could cause a complete loss in minutes.  In general, I would be very surprised if an actual "accidental collision with another object" type damage scenario could ever be as bad as Concordia, today.

[UPNYGuy]

1 hour ago, chengkp75 said:

Typically, up to 100% passenger capacity, all passengers are accommodated in the boats.  Look at Oasis.  Her double occupancy is 5606 passengers.  Her 18 lifeboats hold 354 passengers (370 capacity minus the 16 crew), for a total of 6372 passengers in boats.  Her maximum passenger capacity is 6699, so even somewhat above double occupancy, all passengers are in the boats.

 

Adding in the 2181 crew to the 6699 max passenger capacity, gives a maximum "all souls" of 8880.  The 370x18 lifeboat capacity (6660) is exactly 75% of "all souls".  So, until Oasis gets to a booking level of 114% occupancy, all passengers will be in boats.

makes sense

[chengkp75]

55 minutes ago, ProgRockCruiser said:

Well, yeah, that's considered a worst case scenario, but I was alluding to what truly could be a worst case scenario where damage is, um, inflicted in a strategic manner, intentionally or not, such that it could cause a complete loss in minutes.

Again, unless the damage would have to be caused across multiple compartments (i.e. several explosive devices), most likely nearly 75% of the number of compartments the ship has (and a medium sized ship like the Norwegian Sky has 14 watertight compartments) in order to get the ship to sink in under an hour.  Even ships that break in two, like the SS Pendleton in 1952, where both halves of the ship remained floating for days.  Ships sinking in minutes are generally limited to warships that have their magazines explode.