Tauck is the Best!!!
We were scheduled to do the Norway cruise from Bergen to Oslo this past July. My husband and I spent a week in Copenhagen, then arrived in Bergen on the Friday afternoon prior to the Sunday night start of the Tauck tour. Got a call at dinner Friday night that the tour had to be cancelled because the Ponant boat tender had developed mechanical problems and since it was part of the lifeboat count, the boat could not be on the water.
Tauck staff made everything alright. Offered the Danube cruise starting the same time, but we had already done that, and chose to return home to New York on Monday. The travel department booked and paid for one-way tickets Business class back to NY. And within a week, Tauck credited our credit card for the two extra nights at the Bergen hotel, the cost of the tour, and the cost of travel insurance. We were disappointed that the trip had to be cancelled but we were NOT disappointed in Tauck. It would have been our 5th trip with them, and we plan to take another Tauck tour next summer.
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I’m doing this trip June 2024. I remember reading this and glad to hear Tauck handled it so well.
I find that situation a bit odd. Why would you design a ship in such a manner that the failure of one lifeboat could take the entire ship out of service? I would be building it with at least one extra lifeboat.
P.S. My BS light is flashing. I would like to know “the rest of the story”.
Sealord:
Be willing to bet that the boat sailed, just got a better booking, or they did not fill their part of the boat! Just a maybe…..but I do agree with you.
No, I doubt that is possibility. Tauck and Ponant are both privately owned companies who I am sure have a good relationship and I doubt they would do that to each other.
There are strict rules about how things can legally operate, especially when it involves lots of people. ( I think we learned that when Titanic sank without sufficient lifeboats)
We fell foul of a similar rule returning from our last tour. One of the flight attendants coming to our departure destination fell sick and there was no substitute. The remainder of the crew were near their limit of flying hours, so we had to fly to Boston instead of Philly. The plane landed, a new crew got on and we proceeded to Philly.
We would have been upset for sure, and angry, but nothing we could do about it in Diana’s situation. The Danube cruise would have been no substitute for sure.
That light is still flashing. A flight crew running out of ‘legal’ time is common. But, the sick flight attendant if they were flying with ‘minimum’ crew would cause the airplane to not go anywhere. That is why in my time with AA we seldom flew with minimum crew … and that is why I find it odd that a cruise ship would carry only the minimum number of lifeboats. (Which only hold 75% of the passengers by the way.). They have inflatable rafts for the rest. In order for the lifeboat story to make sense to me, they would have had to have at least two lifeboats out of service. The lifeboats are examined on a regular basis, and sometimes by an outside agency. By the way, the number of required flight attendants is not determined by the number of passengers on the airplane, it is determined by the number of seats on the airplane. At our hubs we also had flight attendants on standby reserve at the airport to cover such contingencies. I once dropped into Puerto Rico with a misbehaving passenger who had assaulted one of our flight attendants. We grabbed a reserve flight attendant in Puerto Rico and took her to Brazil … much to her surprise. She did not even have a change of clothes and no money …. we gave her some money.
If you lose the 'tender' I suspect you lose a major way to get ashore as well as lifeboat capacity. Tenders, can be larger than a lifeboat. It appears, from the photos I've seen, Ponant ships have 2 - 6 large, fully-enclosed lifeboats that double as tenders (they are heated on Le Commandant Charcot!) They don't appear to have any of the smaller solid hull life boats or inflatable life rafts (I don't think Zodiacs qualify) that are normally stowed in canisters along the sides of the ship which automatically inflate when launched. So, the loss of one boat can be significant. I wouldn't want to be one of the people that has to hang on to the ropes on the side of a life boat in northern waters! When operating in Arctic waters, I'm sure there is a requirement that every passenger and crew member has a seat in an enclosed 'life boat.'
As to the availability of a replacement for an out-of-commission lifeboat/tender- who knows? You can't just hoist any lifeboat aboard- it has to be specifically designed (size, weight, and rigging) for a certain number of passengers and crew and be compatible with the ship's davits and stowage space, and certified for that use. It could also be, that while it was reported the "Ponant boat tender had developed mechanical problems" it could actually have been that the davits actually had a problem preventing it from being launched.
Without knowing more info it is hard to make an informed opinion- e.g. what are the lifeboat regulations imposed by the country of registry, country of debarkation, and insurance underwriter, which could all be different.
In general, the number of lifeboats on a cruise ship will vary depending on the size of the ship, but there will usually be enough boats to carry every passenger onboard. Many large cruise ships have up to 20 lifeboats in total.
As well as the lifeboats, there may be a number of inflatable life rafts. Normally these are reserved for the crew because they’re not as comfortable (and the crew may have to use slides to reach them, rather than stepping onto them from the ship’s deck.
The International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) (which Ponant follows) requires that there are life rafts kept on both sides of the ship that could sufficiently hold the entire capacity of the ship, minus the lifeboat capacity on that side.
Our flight was an AA flight codeshare with Qatar and we were at Doha. The flight attendant was sent to the hospital Being AA. We assumed there were no AA flight attendants to spare. I understand about it being number of seats but the flight wasn’t full anyway. It was on Thanksgiving day too