Most cruise ships use tenders for transporting passengers ashore when facilities are unavailable for docking. It doesn't have as much to do with depth of water as with adequate facilities at the port. In my experience as a cruiser we tendered ashore when other cruise ships were already using the port facilities. We tendered ashore at Belize City because the port was too small for the ship. That port had adequate depth because there were container ships docked there.
The tenders are usually lifeboats. On Holland America the tenders change from port to port so that all the lifeboats get operated on a regular basis.

The SSUS, at 55,000 tons, is a very modest size as cruise ships go. In fact, no new cruise ships under about 80,000 tons are being constructed now. The economics is against it. That is why it seems strange that a proposal to convert the ship for cruising is being considered.

Somewhat OT: American aircraft carriers carry "liberty" boats for tenders, but it is common for the Navy to hire local boats of most any type to speed the process along. When the USS America visited Edinburgh in October, 1983, we were loaded onto a crazy collection of tenders, ferries and fishing boats. Apparently the contracting officer decided to save some trouble, so when we left Edinburgh to head down the channel to visit Portsmouth, the motley collection of boats followed in our wake, like chicks following a mamma duck.

A couple of days later, first generation suicide bombers took out the Marine barracks in Beirut. We left Portsmouth in a hurry, leaving about a thousand guys ashore and the motley fleet a few days of pay without any work.

Bob

In the news again..................

http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2018/01/2 ... again.html

PC

Their plea sounds....morbidly pathetic. Are they in actual CONTACT with the President and/or other lawmakers?

Their yearly budget just to keep this thing parked and not sinking probably is more then the yearly total amount spent in rail preservation for half of the US states. I just don't understand how they keep getting money....

If I strap some pontoons on Cotton Belt 819 will someone send us a check for a couple million?

I think it's time they started looking at saving parts of the ship and "reefing" the rest. Make the stacks (or stack) and the main mast the centerpiece of a park or some land-based development the way it's done with the sails of some retired submarines and make the rest a diving attraction. Since the interior's been stripped of hazardous materials, it shouldn't be that hard to finish the conversion.

Their IRS 990 is an interesting read......

As much as I’d like to see her saved, I think her time has come and gone. Save the anchors, screws, mast, and funnels. Scrap or reef the rest. Put funds toward a museum collection and see that her story is told.

Hate to say it but logically the chances of them getting the 1 billion dollars to restore her seems very slim, and sooner or later it's going to try to sink and the repairs will zap their bank account dry. Nice thing about RR stock is you can shove about anything into an affordable building and keep there for almost nothing, or even store it outdoors and not even need to visit it once in 6 months and you know it won't of sunk to the bottom and be a total loss or worse yet incurred a few million in fees to deal with environmental and shipping channel issues...

yes interesting reading on the 990, more people should read these documents.
The screws and "other" select items have been sold for scrap already. The ships engine room is missing a lot of the machinery. They are cutting out internal parts and putting them in salvage dumpsters. Seem to scrap to raise money. The ship is an empty shell.
The berth the ship in is silted up, ship will not sink far, the pier is becoming more valuable than just storing the ship
It should be hauled out to sea and sunk, shame but a point well taken

Just put side wheels on a driver on each side. You may be onto something!

This is exactly the point I made when I suggested to them that they move the ship somewhere else back when they were given $10 million or so a few years back...
They are completely insane to keep the ship at a dock that costs better than $60k a month... And apparently they can't work on her there....
Moving her to a cheaper site would have allowed for better, longer term preservation...
Every time I see this now, I wonder what they are thinking? Or is someone making themselves money from this?

The problem is there is not many sites that can, literally, handle an ocean liner anymore..

And how many of those sites can collect more than $60,000 per month from a collection of houseboats, sailboats, and yachts in the same space?
I recall Flying Scotsman steam train having the same problem on the State Belt Railroad in San Francisco, Calif. It was parked on an unused siding in the curb lane of a street. But, that deprived the City of parking meter revenue from all of those curb spaces in a tourist district.

$60K a month is not as bad as it sounds - it includes security, power, space, and insurance.

As for sinking it as a reef, I think that ship might have sailed - just getting it down the river to the sea and then to the location will be a massive undertaking - far more than most people think. Too, when you sink a ship for a reef, it is far more involved than letting the cocks go - you must also take care of all of the environmentally damaging materials and fluids, and controlled explosions to sink it such that it doesn't turn turtle. It rarely happens with commercial ships as they would rather break it in SW Asia. That obviously can not happen either, in this case - no heavy lift ship could handle it, no way could it be towed.

By the time all is said and done, that $60k will be a drop in the ocean. For those thinking you can make money scrapping her, look at all the failed breaking yards and then google ship breaking in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. It should scare you.

There is too much machinery in place, apparently, to sink it just yet. Most of the engines are still intact?

US ships are not allowed to be sold to be scrapped in those shit holes in Asia, as I recall, but they get around it by re-flagging them in another nation first.

I also think in this case, the pier rent is just pier rent. Maybe security, no power, and no ongoing services like monitoring it for water intake or pumping the bilges. Maybe I am wrong.

I do want to mention if any boat people or especially the people trying to save her read this, none of us mean you ill will, and it would thrill many of us to no end if you pulled off a miracle and save her. But we've all seen the realities on our end, and it just hard to imagine a good end at this late date.