Cruises Ship Crews and COVID - 19

The Viking Sky is heading to Aalesund, Norway for hot layup.
ETA tomorrow morning
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:4232279/mmsi:259186000/imo:9650420/vessel:VIKING_SKY
She is first of several Cruise ships expected to be laid up in Aalesund in the next few weeks.

Already three of the Hurtigruten ships are laid up here:


While a forth one, the Spitsbergen has moved to Fiskerstrand shipyard, preparing for the start of the Svalbard cruise season, which has been delayed:

One of these awful US based Cruise Lines (RCL) is planning to spend $100 Mill. to build a new Cruise Terminal in Galveston:

Will now be delayed by at least a year because of the present situation.

Out of the goodness of its corporate heart I’m sure. Funny how they don’t talk about who pays the other $65 million plus terminal maintenance plus dock improvements to handle the bigger ships and all the other infrastructure crap supported by the state and local taxpayers.

All in all, not a bad deal for Carnival’s tax free bottom line.

Let’s go back just a couple of years and see what the cruise lines contributed to America:

Carnival?? The article says RCL.

Maybe the fault lays with US law (and legalized corruption) not with the corporations (cruise lines, drilling contractors and others) that take advantage of the loopholes??

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Sorry, I read about a cruise line scheme I instantly think of Carnival.

Yeah, and robbery not the fault of the scumbag who robs a liquor store, it’s the fault of the guy who owns the store.

Yes I notice that you have a special “hater” for Carnival and don’t distinguish between Cruise Lines. (US based or not)

Robbing liquor stores are obviously illegal. It is not the same with taking advantage of legal loopholes. (That is why loopholes are created)

Only the FoC pseudo American parasites. I lump them all in the same holding tank of excrement and oily waste they keep getting caught dumping.

You forgot the last bit of my statement.
Non-US based Cruise Lines counts too-

Just read where three NWC Lines ships are heading for Portsmouth Marine Terminal in Hampton Roads. Docking to begin Monday 5/4/2020. “Bliss, Encore,& Spirit.” Minimal crews of about 175 each. Calling it an extended stay. All crew to stay on the vessel as recommended by CDC and to be enforced by US Customs and Border Patrol. WVEC13 News in Norfolk put the story out. Says they are coming up from Florida.

Well, Portsmouth is the terminal they just closed due to underutilization with COVID going on. So at least they Should make some money off of it.

PMT was very slow well before the virus thing, they do need the business. Just didn’t think it would be that kinda business VIG and, NIT doing bulk of the work.

Still thousands of crew members stranded on cruise ships around the world:

@ombugge Why do they insist on debarking (in the cruise ship vernacular) crews in ports where the CDC order applies? Why not go to an underused international airport in The Bahamas or Aruba or elsewhere? Why the ‘woe-is-us we can’t offload in Florida’ act? There’s got to be a score of Caribbean countries they can strong-arm and threaten who would take their ‘healthy’ crew ashore for repatriation.

Am I missing something?

Don’t believe they are debarking. (For now) In for stores, water,maintainence,etc. according to the article.

The method that the cruise lines use to “strong-arm and threaten” when ports and local governments refuse to cooperate is to simply say “do what we want or we will take our business elsewhere”.

In the case of disembarking passengers that might have a highly infectious and possible deadly disease that threat apparently doesn’t work.

Understood. I’m responding to the article @ombugge linked. It talked about stranded crew unable to get home because of the CDC:

Carnival Cruise Line said it has more than 10,000 healthy crew members on board their ships and is planning to have them home to their respective countries over the next week. Roughly 10,000 crew have already been repatriated, the company said in a press release.

Part of the reason crew members have been unable to disembark and travel home is a conflict regarding guidelines issued by the CDC, a situation first reported by The Miami Herald.

The problem doesn’t exisist. The last passengers were disembarked in mid/late March. Now it is “surplus” crew that is left on board.

I’d be the same in the case of passengers or crew. The cruise ship lines can’t leverage that threat in this environment.

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