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#261047 - 05/30/13 07:55 PM Re: Passenger's Emergency Bag for a Cruise Ship [Re: NuggetHoarder]
frediver Offline
Enthusiast

Registered: 05/17/04
Posts: 215
Loc: N.Cal.
IMO after several Cruises:
Small Flashlight.
Your Favorite energy Bars, a few to eat a few to save.
A pk or two of gum.
A water bottle of your own.
A sharp thing in your toilet bag.
Sewing kit.
A small waterproof neck safe stocked with some sort of ID, CC, Cash.

Truth is a Cruise Ship will provide most anything you need if you know
where to find it.
In a real emergency the mini bar or any bar I am near will be raided for water and snacks.
A light will be handy for the dark passageways, a headlamp more so
but that will not fit in your pocket for daily carry.
I will not carry my PassPort in Port unless I am required to, I do have my
D/L, Ship ID, and CC.
I use the neck safe when ashore, normally not while on board.
My Cell Phone remains on board in the safe with PassPort.

Unless you are a ditz if you miss the boat its your fault.
If the company puts you ashore you will have an opportunity
to pack and take at least one bag.
In your normal carry on you should always have basics.
Note book, wallet & ID, Swim Shorts, sandals or shores.
Meds and script, toothbrush. IE basics in case your bags are
late. I was on a cruise last year to Alaska and over 60 people
never Got there bags, the bags were never loaded on the boat.



Edited by frediver (05/30/13 07:56 PM)

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#261048 - 05/30/13 08:36 PM Re: Passenger's Emergency Bag for a Cruise Ship [Re: JerryFountain]
AKSAR Offline
Veteran

Registered: 08/31/11
Posts: 1233
Loc: Alaska
Originally Posted By: JerryFountain
Originally Posted By: Am_Fear_Liath_Mor

The design of most of the these sea going floating hotel barges would indicate that if they get into distress they will begin to list quite badly and quite rapidly. It might be better to do a little research into the list angle before they capsize (could rotate fully and capsize within seconds to minutes i.e. going..going...gone) and consequently getting to the lifeboat muster station in time could prove problematic. Also the list angle will dictate whether the main lifeboats could even be deployed. A compass with a clinometer might be useful to take with you.


Please note the number of Cruise Liners from European and American Ports that have capsized over the last decade or so. That one took several hours and probably some poor seamanship to turn over. Capsize is at the bottom of the list of probable difficulties in a relatively safe technology. The biggest problems are discomfort and, way on top, poor sanitation. These are the problems you should be worrying about.

I believe Jerry has it right. See the article "Taking a hard look at cruise-ship problems" for a discussion of how likely various emergency scenarios are.
Originally Posted By: TeacherRO
Less bag and more planning. Look at your ships registry, captain and recent inspections. Some cruise lines have good safety records...others not so much

The problem is that it is hard to get reliable information. From the article linked above:

"Is what happened to the Triumph normal? Obtaining answers is not easy.

“No one is systemically collecting data of collisions, fires, evacuations, groundings, sinkings,” said Jim Walker, a maritime lawyer in Miami who has attended more than half a dozen congressional hearings about cruise ship crime and passenger safety. The reason for the lack of data is that cruise lines, while based in the United States, typically incorporate and register their ships overseas. Industry experts say the only place cruise lines are obligated to report anything is to the state under whose laws the ship operates. “The whole industry is essentially outsourced abroad,” Walker said. Or, as Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement after the Triumph debacle: “Cruise ships, in large part operating outside the bounds of United States enforcement, have become the wild west of the travel industry.”
--------------snip--------------
Yet for the industry overall, there remains no comprehensive public database of events at sea like fires, power failures and evacuations. Neither the International Maritime Organization nor the U.S. Coast Guard track everything. But there is one unlikely man who does.

“It’s a Canadian professor of sociology,” Walker said, “who testifies in front of the senate.”

Ross A. Klein, an American with dual citizenship who is a professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada, was a longtime cruise enthusiast, spending more than 300 days at sea between 1992 and 2002. During that time, he saw that there were differences between what the cruise industry was saying about environmental and labor issues, and what he was observing.

Today, Klein is an authority on the cruise industry, having testified at hearings before the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate about onboard crimes, disappearances and industry oversights. His website, www.cruisejunkie.com, is a record of fires, sunken ships, collisions and other events at sea over the last few decades that have been culled from news reports and sources like crew members and passengers."


Mr Klein's webpage (www.cruisejunkie.com) seems to be the go to source for info on cruise ship safety issues.
_________________________
"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more."
-Dorothy, in The Wizard of Oz

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#261049 - 05/30/13 09:17 PM Re: Passenger's Emergency Bag for a Cruise Ship [Re: Glock-A-Roo]
chaosmagnet Online   content
Sheriff
Carpal Tunnel

Registered: 12/03/09
Posts: 3819
Loc: USA
Originally Posted By: Glock-A-Roo
Regarding GMRS, I doubt anyone's going to be checking the freqs/bands on your dinky walkie talkies... cool


You may be right, but I get an email every week about FCC enforcement actions and believe me when I tell you that you don't want to be on the business end of one of those.

To be clear, FRS and GMRS radios are only legal to use in the US and Canada. GMRS requires a license. Some channels exist on both FRS and GMRS; you may use those channels legally without a license in the US as long as you stay at or under 500W ERP.

Using these radios in other countries -- including in their territorial waters -- is illegal. I don't know whether it's legal to use them aboard ship in international waters, and I wouldn't rely upon their presence in the gift shop as an indicator.

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#261065 - 05/31/13 08:57 PM Re: Passenger's Emergency Bag for a Cruise Ship [Re: NuggetHoarder]
TeacherRO Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Registered: 03/11/05
Posts: 2574
giving this more thought - I'd go with a shoulder bag ( beach bag looking?)
Easy to carry and looks normal. Skip the sat phone and sub a rescue beacon (spot?)

Passpost, cash, cc and # in pouch.

Spare phone battery and charger

Also, boat emergencies are far different from dumped in a port emergencies.

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#261080 - 06/01/13 04:52 PM Re: Passenger's Emergency Bag for a Cruise Ship [Re: Glock-A-Roo]
wildman800 Offline
Carpal Tunnel

Registered: 11/09/06
Posts: 2846
Loc: La-USA
There is a lot more crime occurring on cruise ships than most people have a clue about.

Do research on "missing cruise ship passengers". There are about 49 missing passengers per year, if memory serves me correctly. The "causes" are largely officially man overboard or unknown. There's more going on there, do the research.
_________________________
QMC, USCG (Ret)
The best luck is what you make yourself!

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#261081 - 06/01/13 06:35 PM Re: Passenger's Emergency Bag for a Cruise Ship [Re: NuggetHoarder]
NuggetHoarder Offline
Member

Registered: 07/01/11
Posts: 145
Loc: Appalachians
As a followup I thought I would recap what our final plan is.

I was on the phone with my Dad and dropped some hints about desalinators and his boat and he was less than enthusiastic about them. I was going to get the desalinator and gift it to him after the cruise for his birthday but now I'm going to skip the desalinator. When we get onboard we'll just squirrel away some water bottles from the ship in our room. We have no baggage limit so I might throw in a case of water with my luggage - not sure about that yet though.

Of all the items listed in our gear list, the only items we have to buy are the biodegradable toilet bags, the smoke hoods, the tubes of zinc oxide, and the Vick's Vapo Rub. I also ordered two Scottevest Pack Windbreakers yesterday. We already have everything else in the list so this entire affair has turned out to be fairly cheap in our case - a little over $300 worth of additional gear for two people and that cost is mainly for the jackets and smoke hoods.

So our final list of gear has now been set at:

(Note most items will be x2 - one for me and one for my girlfried. For expensive items like the sat phone we'll only carry one between us and share.)

containers - Two Scottevest Pack Windbreakers, Two 18"x10" barrel duffel bags, Two hidden money belt/travel wallets
sanitation - biodegradable toilet bags, wet wipes, hand sanitizer, rubbing alcohol, nitrile gloves
health - first aid kit, common meds, zinc oxide, sunscreen, small amount of toiletries (in case we are dumped on an island without luggage), Vick's for under the nose smell prevention if the toilets backup
smoke - Safe Escape ASE60 60 minute smoke evac hood - one for each person
signaling/comms - sat phone, extra minutes, roll-up solar panel, power cords, PLB, mirror, whistle, strobe, two GMRS radios for talking around the ship, charger base, Radio Shack scanner (to monitor ship's crew comms), am/fm radio, cell phone, list of ship's frequencies
water - 32oz stainless water bottle, 32oz nalgene water bottle, collapsible bucket, 100' paracord, Aquamira water filter, chlorine dioxide tablets
clothing - Merino wool long johns tops and bottoms, lightweight shoes, hat with strap, mylar blanket
lighting - waterproof headlamp and small waterproof flashlight, extra batteries
food - Datrex 2400 calorie bars 4 bars per person, snacks, nuts, candy, drink mixes
money - several 1/10oz gold coins, $800 emergency cash, extra credit cards, money belt/travel wallet
papers - passport, list of phone numbers, travel insurance docs, map of islands
miscellaneous - lighter, boat matches, duct tape, ziplock bags, deck of cards, pipe tobacco, SAK with can opener, multi-tool, notebook, pen
fishing - hobo hand fishing rig with 1,000ft of line and a few hooks and lures. Might as well go fishing if the ship goes adrift with no power


Thanks everybody, and I hope this thread can serve as a good starting point for other cruise ship passengers.


Edited by NuggetHoarder (06/01/13 06:41 PM)
Edit Reason: spelling

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#261082 - 06/01/13 08:44 PM Re: Passenger's Emergency Bag for a Cruise Ship [Re: wildman800]
AKSAR Offline
Veteran

Registered: 08/31/11
Posts: 1233
Loc: Alaska
Originally Posted By: wildman800
There is a lot more crime occurring on cruise ships than most people have a clue about.

Do research on "missing cruise ship passengers". There are about 49 missing passengers per year, if memory serves me correctly. The "causes" are largely officially man overboard or unknown. There's more going on there, do the research.
There may well be a good deal of crime on cruise ships, but your statistics on alleged "overboard" cases seems a bit exagerated.

Cruisejunkie dot com has a rather comprehensive list and only shows 200 cases between 2000 to 2013, which averages out to about 15 overboard cases per year. See their list of "overboard" cases at http://www.cruisejunkie.com/Overboard.html

According to the US Maritime Administration in 2011 there were 71.8 million passenger nights booked on north american cruises alone. So 15 passengers per year missing and presumed overboard doesn't sound like too bad of odds.
_________________________
"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more."
-Dorothy, in The Wizard of Oz

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#262077 - 07/25/13 03:11 PM Re: Passenger's Emergency Bag for a Cruise Ship [Re: wildman800]
Arney Offline
Pooh-Bah

Registered: 09/15/05
Posts: 2485
Loc: California
Originally Posted By: wildman800
There is a lot more crime occurring on cruise ships than most people have a clue about.

Yesterday's news reminded me of Wildman's statement, which I had found a bit surprising at the time.

Crimes on cruises profoundly underreported

Quote:
Only a sliver of alleged crimes committed on board cruise ships winds up reported to the public, according to a Senate committee report released Wednesday, leading industry bigwigs to promise changes.

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#262465 - 08/12/13 03:06 PM Re: Passenger's Emergency Bag for a Cruise Ship [Re: NuggetHoarder]
NuggetHoarder Offline
Member

Registered: 07/01/11
Posts: 145
Loc: Appalachians
Trip followup -

The cruise was very nice and we didn't encounter any big problems. Some takeaways:
  • The Scottevest Pack Windbreakers worked great. We used them a lot more than we thought we would.
  • We purchased a "water package" from the ship and they delivered a whole case of 16 oz bottles to our room. We also bought the soda package for unlimited soft drinks.
  • There was a power outage in the hallway outside our cabin and I think some cabins lost power too (not ours). We turned on the scanner to listen and they were talking about a circuit breaker and the power was back on in about 10 minutes. So the scanner was very nice to have to hear the real truth almost instantly. Otherwise, we would have been grabbing our stuff like a big emergency was happening. Besides that one event, we didn't listen to the scanner much at all but it's amazing all the stuff that is going on in the background that you can hear over the scanner.
  • We didn't have any problems talking throughout the ship on the two-way radios and at one point we were pretty far away from each other - almost the entire length of the ship. We didn't take the two-way radios ashore in case they were illegal and we wouldn't have needed them anyway.
  • We ended up needing the long johns because our cabin A/C wouldn't shut off and it was about 60F one night. It turns out that too much wine will seriously impair your ability to operate a thermostat - lol. The next day we realized it was our own fault. We might add a thermometer to our list because I don't think the thermostat temp was correct.
  • Bringing snacks and candy was a good move. That stuff is super expensive on the boat. There is food available somewhere on the ship at all times but sometimes you just want a little bag of chips or a candy bar in your room.
  • The sat phone would not work in our room. It did work on the balcony but it would cut off the second you got about a foot away from the rail because of all the metal overhead. Gotta have a clear view of the sky.
  • The room safe was adequate in size to store all of our valuables for two people including electronics like cell phones, radios, sat phone.
  • We burned through most of the cash we were carrying. We had $1,000x2 spending cash plus $800x2 emergency cash. Between tips and trying to avoid international credit card fees, and hiring a fishing boat and guide, and then another day hiring a dive boat and guide - it got used up. Should have brought more cash. if there had been an emergency on the way back to Ft. Lauderdale we would have been caught short of cash.
  • Having a GPS with street maps was very handy when we were in port. This wasn't on our list but we brought our Garmin Nuvi in case we rented scooters or a car but it turned out that we used it for walking around town and finding places on foot more than anything else and we ended up not renting scooters.
  • Having a small first aid kit came in handy. We used a lot of items from it. Advil, band-aids, sunburn cream, zinc oxide to name a few.
  • We took the batteries out of our cell phones and locked them up in the safe. Royal Caribbean has wireless cellphone roaming on the ship and if your phone automatically gets email and other data like weather reports then it will find the ship's signal and then you get charged international roaming fees. We got this tip from our next door neighbor on the ship right after we checked in. Even if you turn off the phone it may still be connecting to the tower - you have to take the battery out. We took our phones with us onshore, but kept the batteries separate while onshore too - only wanted them with us in case of an emergency.
  • There are no irons in the cabins. There was no self serve laundry either. To have one outfit washed (pants, socks underwear, tshirt, shirt) costs about $15. We washed some small things in the sink like socks and underwear and hung them in the room using paracord for a clothesline. We used shampoo for laundry soap. We will add a tiny bottle of laundry soap to our list. Luckily we brought enough shirts and pants to last the whole trip and it wasn't too bad washing socks and underwear a couple times.
  • Some of the little miscellaneous items we brought came in very handy - deck of cards, duct tape, ziplock bags. We will add safety pins to our list of items that we needed to make clothing repairs. Ended up getting some safety pins from another passenger.

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#262473 - 08/12/13 07:46 PM Re: Passenger's Emergency Bag for a Cruise Ship [Re: NuggetHoarder]
chaosmagnet Online   content
Sheriff
Carpal Tunnel

Registered: 12/03/09
Posts: 3819
Loc: USA
Great report!

Originally Posted By: NuggetHoarder
Even if you turn off the phone it may still be connecting to the tower - you have to take the battery out.


There may be a phone model out there for which this is true, but for most phones it is not. Also, you can put a smartphone into airplane mode to avoid this issue.

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