Hundreds of others covered the banks of Glasgow’s River Clyde a few weeks ago by the rare view of a small high-end cruiseway sailing upriver, almost in the city centre. The journey of Azamara, socially cheerful and extremely cheerful spectators when playing the horn, regularly a sign of lively celebration. But this time, no one was there to salute on the deck of the shipment of 700 passengers, the few dozen members of their skeleton crew. It was not a festive arrival, after all: it was a live shipment, like all the other shipments facing the brutal wake of the pandemic.
Since mid-March, only a small handful of the world’s approximately 400 cruisers have been made up of passengers, all on hyperlocal routes. A few dozen sail around the world with determination, repatriating team members from around the world. The others are inactive in the purgatory of cruise ships, unable to sail commercially in the future. (In the United States, the industry agreed not to resume operations until at least September 15).)
The challenge for many cruise lines? The idling of the pandemic is not only bad for the company’s monetary performance, it is a possible death prevention for its maximum assets: the ships themselves. From mechanical challenges to hurricane hazards and regulatory barriers that can constitute corrupt crimes, this is a quagmire that the industry has never faced on this scale before.
The expense is huge. In a recent filing with the SEC, Carnival Corp., whose nine brands come with the world’s largest cruise line, said its existing shipping and administration costs would be $250 million consistent with the month once all of its shipments were on hiatus. The company says it can’t wait for cruises to resume, a long-term item on a balance sheet that recorded losses of $4.4 billion in the quarter alone.
Here a boat, there a boat
As with airplanes, the first challenge to keep an inactive cruise ship is simply a position to park it. Some 16,000 aircraft were landed in the pandemic, hiding in dry, rust-resistant locations ranging from airport hangars and tarmacs to desert bones. Ships are also looking for the right situations to weather the storm.
There is not enough port area for each ship to dock at the same time, especially for giant ships that regularly bring up to 8,880 passengers and crew. This explains the festive sounds of the “return to basics” of the Azamara Journey in Glasgow (docked at a boarding port instead of at the same old extra cruise post in the city). Less fortunate ships still did not have an option to anchor at sea, avoiding materials and fuel at the nearest port.
This week, an organization of 15 shipments from Carnival Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruises were near the Bahamas, according to Cruisemapper.com, a shipping tracking site. The 6,680-passenger Symphony of the Seas, the world’s largest cruise ship, departs from the Dominican Republic.
According to Bill Burke, the retired vice admiral in the U.S. Navy. And Carnival’s head of maritime services, taking the company’s 105 ships to their resting destinations: 20 in the Caribbean, 40 in Europe, 35 in Asia and 10 in the Eastern Pacific, is a procedure that will continue until the third quarter of the year.
High maintenance
Parking is just the first painful point. To keep things in shape and avoid expensive maintenance costs (a bit like the death of your battery if you leave your car sitting too long), the boats should also remain in operation.
“Modern cruise ships are designed or built to shut down and leave on a pier,” says Monty Mathisen, editor-in-chief of Cruise Industry News. “You’re talking about large amounts of machinery, electronics and even metal that require maintenance, verification and prevention.”
Modern cruise ships are designed or built to shut down and leave on a pier
Basically, it is one of two scenarios, known in the industry as the “hot” or “cold” arrangement.
In hot disposition, the maximum systems continue to operate; in bloodless layers, others stop, such as ballasts, turbines and gearboxes. Cold diapers are also accompanied by additional precautions, such as sealing doors and external windows, moving sheets in a dry place, placing mattresses on the edges, opening all drawers and cabinets in the dressing table, and sealing bathroom accessories, to name a few.
One credit for the hot disposal is that shipments can be returned to service quickly. Once the word is spread, Burke says, the shipment can resume transporting visitors in a few weeks; you’ll still have to board a whole team and navigate to the right destination.
But hot disposition requires more maintenance and more staff. Each shipment has a “safe team” team: about 120 team members for a giant shipment. According to Carnival’s Burke, among the required workforce: a deck crew to lead the shipment, an engineering team to run on electric power and propulsion, a medical team to satisfy the wishes of the workers’ body (especially at the time of Covid-19), safety and enough cleaning and cooking personnel for all to be serviced and fed.
In case of hurricanes or other weather, ships should be able to move. They will also have to comply with environmental, protection and other regulations, or threaten heavy fines, illegal fees and other penalties, Burke says. In 2016, for example, Carnival received a five-year probation and a $40 million fine for a conviction for corrupt criminals.
But there’s a time constraint for this mid-race strategy: according to the shipping analysts on the shipping company’s Lloyd’s list, a hot design is only suitable in the short term. After just six months, ships would likely lose safe certifications that allow them to navigate legally.
A boat out of the water
Cold layers require fewer systems to operate and therefore only 40 team members: a bridge team, engine room operators, fireplace guards and hotel staff. But nearly disrupted grinding operations make the restart more complicated and costly. According to the Lloyd’s Register layout guide, every corner of a ship, from the pump room to the house, must be inspected for parts such as fuel and mold leaks; Electrical equipment, adding navigation systems, will have to be removed from the warehouse and reinstalled; and all dehumidifiers must be disposed of before furniture and family parts can be cleaned and put back in place. This is why bloodless stops are considered advantageous only in the event of a multi-month interruption.
Burke says Carnival can move in that direction in the long run. According to Mathisen, Royal Caribbean has already committed to this touch. Its fleet is largely through dehumidifiers, deployed everywhere, from engine rooms to public spaces.
When they are able to go, the reboot “can take weeks or even months,” he says, details delays in transporting crews to ships, bureaucratic recertification processes, or even investing in costly dry dock repairs.
A more radical option is to prevent the ship, close all systems, leave only a few emergency turbines in operation and a few team members and chimney guards in service. Cruise historian and Peter Knego paint a grim picture of what can happen in this scenario.
“The first thing to do is plumbing,” Knego said. “If you don’t have the pipe active and it makes the toilet and running water in the system work, the rust builds up, the pipe starts to disintegrate and then has major problems.”
CVC systems and wiring are as follows. “And then just the fact that they’re mendacity in salt water, salty air, to break everything down very quickly,” Knego explains. “Literally, you must break the infrastructure to perform maintenance if a shipment has been idle for too long.” With long-term layups, disorders such as rot begin to arise.
If this sounds like a slow and painful death, some corporations are simply ripping off the bandage. In its second-quarter monetary report, Carnival announced plans to eliminate at least six older ships, which could potentially be sold to some other cruise or scrap line, for anyone’s most productive deal. The 24-year-old Costa Victoria cruises logo is said to be intended for a junkyard. Unfortunately, a boat out of the water has a value less than the sum of its parts.
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