I’m with your other points but not this one. Getting people on and off the ship is not the major factor for time in a port, it is reprovisioning. Plus unless the ship sells out there will still be people getting on and off. Plus, the long term cruisers will want to get off and explore these ports, and will need enough time to do so.
Lots of traditional cruise ships have areas for long term cruisers already, and try to sell them to one-time cruisers. The difference is that this is an effort to sell normal staterooms to be used in this way.
VacationsToGo.com, which is the cruise discounter we use, currently has many cruises from 60-274* days. I imagine the long-term cruise logistics are already worked out.
At this very moment I am sitting in an airport lounge waiting to board a flight to Europe for a ten-day Viking cruise from Venice to Athens with stops in Slovenia, Croatia, and Montenegro. We have carefully planned (and paid for) excursions in 11 cities over the next 18 days. I fully expect to have a marvelous time, but to return home completely exhausted.
Just the idea of visiting dozens of new cities over the course of a year (or more), even with a fair number of sea days, is even more exhausting.
We’ve spent a good part of all our free time for the last several months planning where we would go and what we would do for each day of this comparatively short trip. Trying to do the same for a year-long voyage would be a monumental task, even if you chose not to go ashore for a large percentage of them. And what a waste that would be!
Sometimes we just hang around at the port or in the port or the old city, use a hop on/off bus, or go on a pre-arranged bird tour. It’s lovely to sit and drink coffee in an old deep-water port city that’s been catering to/fleecing visitors for hundreds of years. Relaxed, cheap fun, good conversations, historial markers, local snacks, and often harborside attractions like a little bay cruise.
I’d be tempted, once I was retired, but probably wouldn’t go. I doubt my wife would go for it, either. An interesting idea, but that’s a long time away from family and friends.
yeah … especially if I read stuff like “ship” was not deemed fit for 3 years worth of trips by its own mmgt …
if you get fleeced, so are all 3000 others and the company will go bankrupt … so very little chance of recouping your 36 months upfront rent. but that might be solveable with some sort of insurance or so…
and possibly dwindling quality of service is another worry… (starting out with cal. 5 shrimp and ending the trip with cal. 100 shrimp )
Ok, but that ship carries thousands of people. Not only are those people not driving, but they aren’t lighting or air conditioning their houses, or flying, or a doing other high-carbon activities.
Cruise ships run on engines that may be dirty but are fairly efficient (because that lowers costs). That is, the fuel oil they burn may have high sulfur and so on, but in terms of carbon emissions are pretty good. Probably better than a coal plant, at any rate.
At the same time, the ship is like a dense city, with the commensurate efficiencies with regard to travel and climate control and so on. The onboard activities themselves are fairly low carbon. There’s a good chance this is a net win compared to “normal” suburban living.
Had to refresh my memory on this conversation from last March and I may have missed some previously-discussed points, but with that caveat:
I doubt that’s entirely true. People on cruise ships are still maintaining primary residences elsewhere, at least in the vast majority of cases. They may not be using as much electricity or heating fuel etc. for their houses while they’re off on a cruise, but I doubt that their land-based resource use drops to zero.
Sure, it wouldn’t drop to zero in typical cases, though it would be much reduced.
It’s much more likely in this particular case, though, where your primary residence is the ship. Most people aren’t going to just maintain an empty residence and unused car for a full three years. They’ll sell the car and rent/sell their residence. That means less demand on new construction and no waste for idle property.
All they need is a sister ship that’s nearly a clone. Once every 10 or 15 years everyone has to move to the other ship conveniently docked next alongside so the old ship can be overhauled.
I’d expect a lot other ordinary maintenance can be done at e.g. annual 2-weeks stays dockside someplace.
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