Well we took our first week long cruise a week ago out of Miami -- I was truly amazed at the maneuverability of these new cruise ships but what really seemed cool was in the Grand Caymans. As we left the ship and took the tender to land I noticed that although we had been in the harbor for several hours we had no anchor over, and I could see the bow and stern thrusters occassionally operate. Later when we returned the captain came on the PA system and said "you may have noticed we did not anchor, we used our digital positioning system (GPS based) to keep the ship in one position and also automatically bow into the wind and tender side to the shore the entire time" -- he said "we do this to lessen the environmental impact of anchoring." This was on the Navigator of the Sea, a RCCL ship build in 2002.
Wow --very cool ---
(and also the opposite in seamanship of the freighter that ran aground on FLL)
Wow --very cool ---
(and also the opposite in seamanship of the freighter that ran aground on FLL)