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Oh_No
Trogglus normalus
join:2011-05-21
Chicago, IL

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Oh_No to tmpchaos

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Re: Carniva Cruise Ship hell ride

When the ship first broke down and they said you have live on here for 4 days shitting in bags I would have asked to use the sat phone and called a charter boat or a friend with a boat to come pick me up.
If they would not let me use the phone to make such a call, I would have just "slipped" over the railing and let the coast guard pick me up and take me to shore.

The sad part is they ended up giving everyone full money back + $500 extra. Instead of that $500 extra they could have just used that money to unload the people to several other charter boats on day one and taken them straight back to galveston instead of torturing them for 4 days.

tmpchaos
Requiescat in pace
Numquam oblitus
join:2000-04-28
Hoboken, NJ

tmpchaos

Numquam oblitus

said by Oh_No:

The sad part is they ended up giving everyone full money back + $500 extra. Instead of that $500 extra they could have just used that money to unload the people to several other charter boats on day one and taken them straight back to galveston instead of torturing them for 4 days.

Don't forget the "a future cruise credit equal to the amount paid for this voyage" in addition to the above. How many people do you think will use it?

CylonRed
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Bloom County
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The issue with a charter boat is transferring people to the charter safely not only that - but a charter would need to be one hell of the big boat to unload over 4K people in any amount of time

Not like the people could just walk over to the charter. It is also very unlikely a charter would have taken the job due to the liability alone.

pike
Premium Member
join:2001-02-01
Washington, DC

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said by Oh_No:

The sad part is they ended up giving everyone full money back + $500 extra. Instead of that $500 extra they could have just used that money to unload the people to several other charter boats on day one and taken them straight back to galveston instead of torturing them for 4 days.

I don't think you've fully thought this through. First of all, I suspect there simply isn't that much unused charter capacity available concentrated anywhere in the world, even in the Gulf. Supposing there was, it would require many smaller boats and likely would take nearly as long as it did to just tow the cruise ship back to port. We're talking about several thousand people here. Each one must be accounted for upon landfall, and additionally must go through US customs. And you would then have to somehow match up all the passenger's cargo and luggage with them back at shore, because they wouldn't be wasting space on the charters for anything other than people -- yet another customs nightmare. I think they made the right decision.
said by cyclonred :

Not like the people could just walk over to the charter.

Actually, as funny as it sounds, they could just walk over to the charter. Cruise ships are equipped to handle just such a thing because some destination ports are not large enough to handle massive vessels and passengers must be tendered to shore. Most ships have a little dock, or stairs, or a bridge, or all of the above that folds out of the side to facilitate this.

printscreen
join:2003-11-01
Juana Diaz, PR

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said by Oh_No:

The sad part is they ended up giving everyone full money back + $500 extra. Instead of that $500 extra they could have just used that money to unload the people to several other charter boats on day one and taken them straight back to galveston instead of torturing them for 4 days.

The big question here is if there was enough capacity in oceangoing vessels to evacuate the 4,200 people on-board this ship on such short notice? The closest they could have done to do this was to get a ship like Carnival Magic (which also sails from Galveston), remove it from its schedule in the middle of its current voyage (meaning it would likely need to sail back a couple of days to its home port) drop off all guests (and refund their expenses), drop off something like half of its crew (so that it can pick the 4,200 people on Triumph without exceeding its lifeboat capacity), sail for one full day to the location where Carnival Triumph was drifting and then transfer 4,200 people from one ship to the other using small tender boats or life boats in the open seas with one ship drifting aimlessly and without power. It would have taken probably just as long to get the rescue ship out there and would put the passengers at risk.

Both USCG and Carnival said it was safer for people to remain aboard the ship than trying to transfer in the high seas. Remember this ship was left stranded in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, not close to shore. A ship this big is only abandoned if there is more risky to remain on board (such as major fire or sinking ship).

Carnival has many more ships but I used Carnival Magic for the example because it sails from the same home port and is one of just three ships that are bigger enough in capacity that could take the entire crew and passengers from a ship like Carnival Triumph.
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said by pike:

said by cyclonred :

Not like the people could just walk over to the charter.

Actually, as funny as it sounds, they could just walk over to the charter. Cruise ships are equipped to handle just such a thing because some destination ports are not large enough to handle massive vessels and passengers must be tendered to shore. Most ships have a little dock, or stairs, or a bridge, or all of the above that folds out of the side to facilitate this.

The bigger cruise ships like Carnival Triumph actually carry a couple of tender boats which also double as lifeboars. However, tendering close to the shore and often in protected waterways from a ship that can drop anchor or remain stationary using its thrusters is hardly the same as a dead ship drifting in the high seas and deep water.

They did trasfer food from other Carnival ship that came alongside but it is not the same to transfer a few tons of cargo than transfer 4,200 people. Or even the two medical evacuations that took place while waiting for the tugs. In that case it was more risky to remain on the ship than to transfer to another ship. Despite what many people think about safety and maintenance, passenger, crew and ship safety come first. Otherwise the ship would not be considered seaworthy.

CylonRed
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quote:
Actually, as funny as it sounds, they could just walk over to the charter.
I don't think you thought this thru fully....

Oh_No
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join:2011-05-21
Chicago, IL

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The only thing wrong was a lack of power.
They could have had a boat along side and tied in the electrical to the main boat to restore all services.
That could have been done in hours.

They already have a an option to tie into off ship power for when they are at a port. They could easily have done this safely at sea with a 2nd boat.

They had options instead of forcing people to poop into bags for 4 days.

CylonRed
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CylonRed

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Assuming they had a boat available anywhere near the area.... Not sure of the seas and if it would have been safe with 2 boats essentially drifting....

printscreen
join:2003-11-01
Juana Diaz, PR

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said by Oh_No:

The only thing wrong was a lack of power.
They could have had a boat along side and tied in the electrical to the main boat to restore all services.
That could have been done in hours.

They already have a an option to tie into off ship power for when they are at a port. They could easily have done this safely at sea with a 2nd boat.

They had options instead of forcing people to poop into bags for 4 days.

Cruise ships, at least not the huge ones like this, don't use shoreside power. Most ports do not have the electrical capacity to power a small floating city neither are the ships equipped to do so. Only a handful of recently built cargo ships and only a handful of ports have the ability to do this. These ships live on generator power from the moment they are turned on at the shipyard to the day that are decommissioned.

While they could have certainly rigged something by putting some large generators on a barge and tie them up alongside the ship for powering a few hotel systems (such as water production, vacuum systems and illumination). Such thing would not be capable of powering propulsion systems, HVAC for the cabins and food storage freezers and refrigerators, however. We don't know for certain the level of damage in the ship's power grid which I guess must have been critical enough to prevent running the midship engine room to provide power to most of the systems I mentioned above. We are talking about a huge ship the size of three football fields housing 4,200 people and that requires quite a bit of electric power.

r81984
Fair and Balanced
Premium Member
join:2001-11-14
Katy, TX

r81984

Premium Member


Power Cables for Cruise Ships
I dont think you are right about that.

There are docks that wont allow cruise ships to idle their engines for power. They have to plug into dock side power to stop their engine emissions.

pike
Premium Member
join:2001-02-01
Washington, DC

pike

Premium Member

r81984 See Profile appears to be correct. A cursory Google search reveals an emerging industry cropping up to serve cruise ship shore power, including major players like Eaton Corp, Cochran Marine, and Carnival Corp.

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Juana Diaz, PR

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That will likely be the case with new builds. Carnival Triumph was launched in 1999. I was on Carnival Magic which was launched in 2011 and it is not equipped for shoreside power. I did the "Behind the Fun" tour on that ship and they explained to some detail the power system and no mention was made of shoreside power.
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Can you provide some links about this? I found this on Wikipedia and only mentions ships from Hapag-Lloyd as being the first to use this but makes no mention of cruise ships or cruise lines.

»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co ··· _Ironing
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said by r81984:

I dont think you are right about that.

There are docks that wont allow cruise ships to idle their engines for power. They have to plug into dock side power to stop their engine emissions.

Can you provide your source for this? As I said previously, for small ships it might the case but for the huge cruise ships of the major lines, simply it is not. They don't get power from the shore.

Voxxjin
Made of Hamburger
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join:2010-01-13
Dupont, WA

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said by printscreen:

Can you provide some links about this?

»www.princess.com/news/ba ··· ons.html

A bunch of ports along the west coast are doing this. Mostly for container ships at the moment.

pike
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join:2001-02-01
Washington, DC

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»www.cruiseindustrynews.c ··· -no.html

»www.cochraninc.com/marin ··· tnership

»www.uscg.mil/imo/wmd/doc ··· -Dow.pdf

»www.nydailynews.com/new- ··· .1091106

»www.cruisecritic.com/new ··· ?ID=4427

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Thanks for the links. This is still in its infancy and only a small small number of cruise ships (out of the hundreds currently sailing). I had found about the California 2014 deadline before. I found it interesting that most of the ships mentioned in the reports are from various Carnival Corp. lines yet only one ship from Carnival Cruise Lines proper is equipped for shoreside power out of 24 ships. I posted the question about shoreside power on Carnival ships in one official Carnival page on Facebook and they forwarded the question to the proper people and I am waiting for their answer.

Then again, back to the original issue, they could not plug Carnival Triumph to external generators because it is not equipped to do so, not to mention that you cannot power the entire ship with generators you could bring alongside a drifting ship in the middle of the Gulf. You would need at least one bus-sized generator to provide enough power to hotel systems and this is not something someone has a spare one just lying around.

pike
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join:2001-02-01
Washington, DC

pike

Premium Member

Agreed on all points.

It's difficult to pin down the exact power requirements of a cruise ship, but one presentation I found assumes an average of 7 megawatts while idling at port. That's quite substantial for those not versed in such measurements. Even without knowing anything about the switchgear or load shedding arrangements on the Triumph, it's easy to see once again they made the right move. If someone did manage to shit out a 7 MW marine generator and tow it to the Triumph, they would still need to find a way to safely connect it to the ship's distribution system - something it was never designed for. This would require some time to engineer and gather parts. It's not like there's random supply houses out on the open ocean. Basically it would have taken longer than it did to just tow the ship back.

Edit: link to the presentation »aapa.files.cms-plus.com/ ··· _Bob.pdf

USNavy
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USNavy

Anon

"It's not like there's random supply houses out on the open ocean"
Of course there is: USN
Done all the time.
Power, food, water, friendly service techs.
Communication to anywhere on the planet.
AND, they pay you!

CylonRed
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Bloom County

CylonRed

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They generally do not come to any boat - especially if there are no threats to life. Even more so if the boat flies a non-US flag. Most cruise ships are not registered in the US - I believe this boat was registered in Portugal.
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