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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Agree. But are they trying to strong arm, or just pleading for some understanding?
Having to spend weeks/months on board ships to be repatriated to their home countries is/should be, something of the past for seafarers.
Yet that appears to be the option chosen by some cruise lines.
(OK, so they gets to reposition their ships for the future markets as well)
Pleading for understanding is all they got. Strong arm tactics won’t work in this case.
When the chips are down nobody outside the maritime community gives a shit what happens to mariners.
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They are not strong arming the Caribbean countries, but most of them are trying to work and help find a solution. Those countries still have their own population to care for, and they are prioritizing that as of now.
The conflict is one of their own making. They refuse to comply with the simple CDC conditions.
I’m sure there were many discussions between ships, the port, CDC, and Border Patrol what the conditions/requirements would be before they left Florida. And method of payment
Payment for what?
All the services rendered. And berth /port fees. Vendors,etc. None of this will be free.
This may seem like quibbling over an minor point but in my experience wrt port entry the ships, that is the captains or whatever are likely not going to discuss anything with the port.
The ship fills out and submits the required paperwork for clearance to enter port but if the port refuses entry any negotiations beyond that point are going to be done by the company, usually thorough a local owner’s agent.
This isn’t a yacht that just sails into port and then goes to customs and immigration to get cleared.
They already have leases for space and contracts with suppliers. The salaries of the CBP officers assigned to the port are paid by the US tax payer. The CG and the CDC are also funded by tax payers.
There are quite a few “incidental” costs that are payable by the parasites.
repairs, tugs,pilots,fuel, stores,etc. Maybe I should have been a little clearer, perhap added the word"management’ after the word “Ships” .Am well aware management/agent sets up most of this.(They did for me anyway) Whoever sets it up still must pay for services rendered. Well aware what government services the taxpayers pay for. There is a lot of money for the port, contract or not. Leases are not free. still goes to the port. Pilots are not free, etc. One way or the other, they will leave a substantial amount of wealth they would rather not spend behind in the port, that otherwise would have been unused space. That dock was scheduled to lay up for a while beginning May 4. .Sure those “leases” were hastily negotiated.
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I’m thinking relatively it’s a bump in the road over normal layover costs compared to the expense of getting the crews home, laying the ships up for a couple of months and rebuilding public confidence but I don’t have any numbers so I could well be wrong.