Where is Archimedes when you need him?
Yesterday I read an article about the world’s largest cruise ship.
The idea of a cruise is at the very bottom of my wish list along with a stay in New York [too noisy and nothing but concrete and steel] or Las Vegas [too bright and brash]. The concept of confining myself to a steel box with nothing to do except get pissed does not float my boat, as it were. The ferry to France is about my level of tolerance when it comes to life on board.
I will be honest and say that the prospect of a cruise on the “Icon of the Seas” would terrify me. It’s too big. It looks like a cross between a gigantic shopping centre without the shops and a kid’s amusement park. I would imagine I would spend the entire trip getting absolutely stocious doing a pub crawl through the 40 [fucking forty?] bars and lounges. What the hell can you do on a yoke that size? Lounging around the seven swimming pools? I am not a lounger. Admiring the view? Once you have seen one horizon, you have seen them all.
The thing that terrifies me most though is the physics. I am not a marine engineer by any stretch of the imagination but I do know a scrap of physics. By my understanding, for a boat to remain stable and upright, its centre of gravity has to be lower than the centre of buoyancy. Now the centre of buoyancy has to be close to the sea level, so to lower the centre of gravity below that point, the majority mass must lie below sea level in the bottom of the ship’s hull. It seems obvious as it did to the inventor of the keel.
Now look at the “Icon of the Seas”, all twenty decks of it. That is a massive chunk of steel above the water line. The engines must be enormous and incredibly heavy, or else they have a couple of thousand tons of lead in the keel? It’s thoughts like that that would keep me awake for the entire cruise.
Anyhows I never begrudge anyone else having a trip. I wish them well on their maiden voyage.
Why do I think of that other maiden voyage of a luxury ship?
The “Titan 1 C” as Philomena Cunk called it?
I’ll tell you a story. It’s a little bit long but bear with me.
I’m a great believer that modern life is built around complicated systems but, wherever there’s a system, there’s a way to beat it.
Cruising is no exception.
Here’s my story.
The thought of cruising on that new behemoth makes me shudder. As does any sort of cruising be it the old-fashioned way with lots of pensioners dressing up for dinner to spend their kids’ inheritance on the high seas or American-style cruising which is basically fat cunts eating a lot in the buffet.
But within the cruising system there are fantastic bargains and ways to make it even more of a bargain.
Re-positioning cruises happen twice a year – in late Autumn the big ones cross the Atlantic to winter in the Caribbean and reverse that in Spring to spend the summer in Europe. You take a chance with Atlantic weather but there are fantastic bargains.
Last October we sailed Southampton to Florida via the Caribbean for 12 nights and paid about £800 each. All your grub – and the food is very good – and all the entertainment, which is also good, was included.
Where the bastards catch you out is drink prices. If I say £11 for a can of Guinness you’ll understand. And because it was an American cruise ship it was full of Yanks who, as we know, pay a fortune for shit drinks.
However, each cruise line has slightly different regulations on what you can bring aboard drink-wise. In this case we were allowed one bottle of wine per passenger. But we also discovered that you can bring on board as much bottled water as you wish.
Plus we found out they don’t match up with what’s in your checked-in luggage and what you carry on board.
Now, we never check in luggage anywhere and don’t actually possess a suitcase. So we bought one in a second-hand shop for two quid and filled it with 60 cans of Feavertree tonic water.
In our carry-one luggage we had a sealed pack of 16 water bottles from Tesco that cost us about four quid.
However the ends of this shrink-wrapped water were open so by carefully prizing open and removed the outer bottles we then filled the inner ones with two litres of Gordon’s Gin.
We got it all on board without a hassle and that, plus the two bottles of wine, was our booze for the trip.
Furthermore, at the end of the voyage we were presented with a “ suggested gratuity “ bill of $300. On the last day I went down to settle the bill, told them to fuck off in a nice way, and paid the final bill for our trip of $42.
Now, we had given gratuities. But that was to the Indian lads in a bar few passengers seemed to go to who, after certain “ negotiations “ were happy to sling us free booze all night for 20 bucks here and there.
As I say, where’s there’s a system there’s a way around it !
Congratulations on what is probably the longest reply i the history of the site! It was so long the site didn’t know what to do with it and stuck it down the back of the sofa and I only just found it.
Twelve nights for £800 isn’t bad value when compared for example with the cost of a gite in France. I still couldn’t be enticed though. My “thing” is peace, quiet and a lot of nature. I’m not one to be entertained and if it weren’t for Herself I doubt I would even bother with the radio or television. When it comes to mixing with people I tend to become somewhat introverted and am just happy with my own company.
There is one type of cruising I like though and that’s hiring a river cruiser. I did quiet a lot of that on the River Shannon many years ago and loved it. I used to have a few friends in a local pub and we used to go as a gang. So I had the best of all worlds -only people I liked around me and constantly changing scenery [and wildlife]. It was great craic and would love to do it again. Sadly it has become very expensive and I would have difficulty forming a crew.
Don’t dismiss Las Vegas.
I’d recommend first seeing the Grand Canyon nearby, then spend a few nights in Vegas. From one of the most spectacular natural sights on the planet to one of the most unnatural so close together.
Las Vegas is indeed bright and brash, your senses can easily be overwhelmed by the sheer excess on show, the vast amounts of money that’s been spent to create it and the extremes of everything you can experience there. And much of it’s free, the mere exteriors of the casinos count as a spectacular show themselves, the interiors featuring slot-machines that you can even play while having a piss are quite a novelty too – each time hoping the previous puller washed his hands first.
I’ve no plans to go back, but I’d rather go to Vegas than New York any day, a truly horrid place, probably even worse than any unfeasibly large cruise ship.
Bright flashy lights and noise just confuse the old brain these days. Paradoxically, one of the places I would least like to visit is beside one of the places I would most like to visit – the Grand Canyon. That and Yosemite.
The space above the water line is largely air. Modern lightweight construction methods do away with the “lot of steel”. The cabins are around the outside and the centres are empty — no-one much wants an internal cabin.
If nothing else the modern ships need to roll very little, so that punters enjoy the trip much more. That is incompatible with a high centre of gravity. There are massive weights in the hull to counter the rolling.
Isn’t it a bit like an iceberg or a swan – 90% under water?
The centre of buoyancy is at the centre of the displaced body of water and the centre of gravity is above that (exactly where depends upon the physical characteristics of the ship). The magic happens because above the centre of gravity (G) there exists a point called the metacentric height (M). For a ship to have a positive righting moment in all loaded conditions M must always be above G, the differece between G & M is know (strangely) as the GM and this is proportional to the righting moment created when a ship is listed by external forces (eg wind and waves). It is this righting moment that will bring the ship back to an even keel. As you correctly surmise there is an awful lot of weight below the waterline and comparitively little above. Icon of the Seas has a draft (amount of the ship underwater) of 9.2m and height of approximatley 80m above the waterline, So as you say it looks unstable but in fact is not. As a matter of interest the 6 main engines weigh a total of 1,262 tonnes and have and total output of 121,400 bhp.