Oceania has announced their 2008/2009 Winter Collection, these new itineraries opened for booking on August 1st, and that very day Oceania setting a booking record.
Princess has announced their 2008/2009 slate of Caribbean Escapes offering itineraries on 7 ships. Further south, Royal Caribbean will be offering sailings from Colon, Panama on Enchantment of The Seas.
Majestic America has announced that Delta Queen will be retired next year.
Carnival Valor managed to hit a parking structure while mooring in New York, and somebody got a little too close to Queen Mary 2 as she moored in New York.
NCL is taking part in a unique program recycling used cooking oil and other oily wastes.
Port Everglades is negotiating with Royal Caribbean to have at least one of the two new Genesis class ships homeported in Fort Lauderdale.
This week we talk about being healthy while on your cruise, and staying healthy starts before you even leave.
Filed under: Carnival Cruise Lines, Majestic America Line, NCL America, Norwegian Cruise Line, Oceania Cruises, Podcast, Princess Cruises, Royal Caribbean International
One Comment for “The Mail Buoy Episode 75”
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Thank you
August 7th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Hey Guys, Rob again!
First off I want to thank you for responding to my earlier post, it really made my day to hear it mentioned on the podcast. Point well taken on Carnival and NCL, and yes Michael I did note the story on NCL and the used cooking oil on this week’s podcast.
Which brings me to the topic of biodiesel. I had to laugh when I heard the story because when I’m not scanning cruise websites for interesting tidbits, my day to day job involves pollution modeling and as such I know a little bit about biodiesel.
First off, the process to combine vegetable products with regular diesel fuel to make biodiesel requires a significant amount of processing that simply couldn’t be done on a ship or at the dock. There’s a few chemicals involved that frankly I don’t want to be anywhere near let alone have in a tank 2 decks below my cabin.
That said it is true that many smaller diesel engines can be converted to burn cooking oil filtered for impurities, which in theory could power small generator onboard. However, doing that would seriously void any warranty and no one knows the long term impact on the engine.
In relative terms the amount of used oil products we’re talking about here is a drop in the bucket compared to the total fuel used on a ship. By my admittedly quick and dirty calculations, converting all the “donated” oils mentioned in the article (which I assume took the 2 ships in Miami and the 3 ships in Hawaii several months to accumulate) would be the equivalent of powering one cruise ship for a single day. Still, I suppose that’s better than burning the waste oils out at sea or sending it to a dump on shore.
Oh and finally it’s rumored that cars converted to run on cooking oil actually smell like pop corn, which I suppose on a ship would be good if you were watching a movie on the jumbo LCD screen by the pool!
As always keep up the good work, and Patricia enjoy your upcoming cruise!
Rob