At least if your car stops you do not have to swim miles and miles and miles to get help. If I were to take a cruise it would be in the northern climes. I am not a fan of the tropics.

Have fun with your family! Chances are, everything will be fine and you'll return home with a tan and maybe ten more pounds!

Well, the cruise ship Triumph (kind of ironic name, come to think of it) is almost at port.

I kept reading these reports of water and sewage in the hallways and that seemed odd to me. I figured it was because the passengers were told to use plastic bags for personal sanitation and to put the bags out in the hallway for collection and maybe those bags leaks if they are not tied closed tightly.

But finally started reading some reports from passengers where actual water and sewage lines are reported broken in different parts of the ship. I don't know anything about maritime plumbing, but I'm a bit surprised that a power loss causes things like sewer lines to break. Anyway, so these reports of sewage soaked hallways really are true.

"OK, grandma, just wheel yourself down the hallway in your wheelchair back to the cabin and I'll be right there. What do you mean your hands are getting wet?..." Eiewwwww.

Carnival Cruise Line is lucky that there has been virtually no phone or Internet service during this ordeal. They'll certainly be raked over the coals shortly as soon as people get back in touch with civilization and get back on social media in droves.

Onion sandwiches? I like onions, but wow. Sounds like a good excuse to throw some Mainstay bars in the bottom of a suitcase before you take a cruise.

I never go anywhere without tucking in a least a bit of a survival snack somewhere - usually a Tanka Bar and at least two Clif bars. Indulge yourself and get something appealing and tasty.

These ship designs such as the Carnaval Triumph are inherent design death traps, another 'triumph' of profit/low cost over safety much like the American and Soviet designed nuclear power stations which have gone bang in recent years.

The main problem is low drafts, stacked hotel cabins, which raise the Center of Gravity and when combined with the center of Buoyancy results in poor stability due to a smaller metacentric height leading to very low angles of list before the whole structure capsizes with a very high roll speed making evacuation times very small. Augmented stability control systems using electric power (which have in this case failed) when combined with poor weather i.e wind shear and heavy seas could be catastrophic.

A ship of this size capsizing in less than a few minutes would result in thousands of casualties.

Probably not a question of if but when considering the numbers of these type of vessels especially as these ships begin to reach the end of their service life times and the pressure to have lower operating and maintenance costs in difficult economic times.

This article seems worth reading. I wasn't aware that cruise companies are based in other countries to avoid government safety regulations, etc. Even more alarming is what seems to me to be a poor safety record. How often are engine fires supposed to happen anyway?

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/13/opinion/walker-cruise-ships/index.html

Looks like the items in this video could have proved to be useful for passengers on this vacation cruise.

Protect and Survive - Sanitation

Very simply, cruise ships pack a lot of people together in a small space, just as occurs at a stadium or nightclub, etc. Very simply, I don't like crowds. I prefer to face challenges where at least I have room to maneuver.

Of course, creating a crowd and putting it on the water does generate some unique problems.

This, exactly. Cruises just don't sound fun to me for exactly this reason...not only is it a big crowd, but there is literally NO escape. Not cool.