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Cruise ships chopped in half are a license to print money

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Re: Cruise ships chopped in half are a license to print money

#211

Post by perlgeek »

I've told the story before on HN, but maybe it fits here too...

A great-uncle of mine lived in Eastern Germany. He bought a pleasure cruiser, about 28 meters length. For everything longer than 25m, he would have needed a captain's patent to operate, so he cut out a bit more than 3m at the rear, fixed up all the wires, pipes and shafts, and then had nice (even if imbalanced-looking) boat.

So he did the opposite of what the article is about :-)

He spent most of his vacations on that boat, cruised up and down the rivers with his family. https://www.ddr-binnenschifffahrt.de/fotogalerie-gross/Passa... you can see that it ends pretty abruptly at the rear.

Re: Cruise ships chopped in half are a license to print money

#213

Post by SoftTalker »

protocolture wrote: post #4

I worked on a cruise ship below decks, once, for 3 hours, and I swore I would never take a cruise. Take the dirtiest hotel you have ever been in, and then ensure you cant leave it for days at a time. It interests me that demand is increasing but I suspect thats just good advertising.

Yeah I cannot imagine the attraction. It's almost literally one of the last things I'd ever want to spend vacation time on.

I talked to a guy who took a week-long cruise that he described as being locked in a prison breathing diesel exhaust. He said there was no place on the ship were you could not smell the exhaust.

Re: Cruise ships chopped in half are a license to print money

#214

Post by 0xdde »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #171
JKCalhoun wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all-inclusive resorts... And these have zero appeal to me as well. As someone who road trips all across the U.S. with the wife, the highlights have of course been the serendipitous ones.

That's the beautiful thing, different people enjoy different things, and on vacation, people get to pick and do the thing they enjoy, rather than the thing someone else enjoys. Except with cruise ships, morally righteous people are declaring this specific thing wrong and trying to keep people from being allowed to do this. The Guardian claims that "At full power the Harmony of the Seas’ two 16-cylinder engines would…

You are cherry-picking only one of the environmental issues that cruise ships cause. Even that aside, you are also ignoring a large part of the discussion in the first article you cite, which focuses on all of the other, acute, air pollution cruise travel causes in the port cities. Focusing on CO2 is a strawman.

Re: Cruise ships chopped in half are a license to print money

#215

Post by sumeno »

SoftTalker wrote: post #213
protocolture wrote: post #4

I worked on a cruise ship below decks, once, for 3 hours, and I swore I would never take a cruise. Take the dirtiest hotel you have ever been in, and then ensure you cant leave it for days at a time. It interests me that demand is increasing but I suspect thats just good advertising.

Yeah I cannot imagine the attraction. It's almost literally one of the last things I'd ever want to spend vacation time on. I talked to a guy who took a week-long cruise that he described as being locked in a prison breathing diesel exhaust. He said there was no place on the ship were you could not smell the exhaust.

He was greatly exaggerating or has an incredibly sensitive nose

Re: Cruise ships chopped in half are a license to print money

#216

Post by m3047 »

AlbertCory wrote: post #187
protocolture wrote: post #4

I worked on a cruise ship below decks, once, for 3 hours, and I swore I would never take a cruise. Take the dirtiest hotel you have ever been in, and then ensure you cant leave it for days at a time. It interests me that demand is increasing but I suspect thats just good advertising.

This is anecdata: I know three people who've come back sick from cruises. The most interesting one was just last week: someone who had Mal de Débarquement Syndrome for six months. She was dizzy all the time. There is no cure. This might be a good one to try on your boss if you want to avoid business travel: say you suffer from Mal de Débarquement Syndrome! https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24796-mal-de-.…

Land sickness. I owned / lived on a 41 foot sailboat for a decade. One of my semi-secret amusements was taking people to a tavern and buying a pitcher of beer after we'd been out all day. Idly drinking beers and having a pleasant conversation, and then watching them try to stand up to go use the restroom.

Re: Cruise ships chopped in half are a license to print money

#217

Post by SoftTalker »

raldi wrote: post #62
jillesvangurp wrote: post #38

Cruise ships have a huge ecological impact everywhere they go. They burn colossal amounts of fuel, they produce lots of toxic exhaust, sewage, etc. A lot of destinations for these things don't exactly have a lot of regulations for any of this either. Just flying to your destination and staying in some nice place is arguably both better for the environment and probably a lot more enjoyable depending on your tastes. No…

They produce sewage that would otherwise not have existed?

Sewage that would be treated, not pumped raw into the ocean.

Re: Cruise ships chopped in half are a license to print money

#218

Post by SoftTalker »

Neil44 wrote: post #166
consumer451 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Years ago, Key West built enough extra sewage treatment capacity to process sewage from the many cruise ships which visit the city. There was a plan to require all ships to discharge and pay for treatment so that sewage was not dumped 12 miles off-shore, which is only 3 miles past the reef. Captains get a bonus for fuel savings, so they tend to dump as soon as it is legal. The cruise industry threatened to remove Key…

Fish and birds poop in the water, all day. It's just fertilizer.

And animals poop in your yard. Do you? It's just fertilizer.

Re: Cruise ships chopped in half are a license to print money

#219

Post by sumeno »

AlbertCory wrote: post #187
protocolture wrote: post #4

I worked on a cruise ship below decks, once, for 3 hours, and I swore I would never take a cruise. Take the dirtiest hotel you have ever been in, and then ensure you cant leave it for days at a time. It interests me that demand is increasing but I suspect thats just good advertising.

This is anecdata: I know three people who've come back sick from cruises. The most interesting one was just last week: someone who had Mal de Débarquement Syndrome for six months. She was dizzy all the time. There is no cure. This might be a good one to try on your boss if you want to avoid business travel: say you suffer from Mal de Débarquement Syndrome! https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24796-mal-de-.…

I know dozens who have come back completely healthy

Re: Cruise ships chopped in half are a license to print money

#220

Post by AlbertCory »

sumeno wrote: post #219
AlbertCory wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is anecdata: I know three people who've come back sick from cruises. The most interesting one was just last week: someone who had Mal de Débarquement Syndrome for six months. She was dizzy all the time. There is no cure. This might be a good one to try on your boss if you want to avoid business travel: say you suffer from Mal de Débarquement Syndrome! https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/24796-mal-de-.…

I know dozens who have come back completely healthy

that's what "anecdata" means
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