Changes

(Wednesday, April 13th, 2016)

That’s a great Bowie song. If I have you humming that for the rest of the day, I won’t apologize.

Well, I am learning about the US laws concerning US citizens traveling on foreign vessels. I learn and obey. (I am saluting as I type, which is difficult.)

I had been making plans to take a little time off the ship, for two excursions. The first plan was to disembark in Houston, and re-embark in New Orleans. I planned to drive to New Orleans and spend more time there than in Houston, and to enjoy a hotel and some Cajun food.

The second plan was to visit my family in central Florida. I planned to disembark in Port Manatee, then re-embark in Savannah. It’s a piece of cake to get to Savannah.

Those plans are shown on the map labeled “Map 2016-04-06” in “Raw Photos>Cooked>Progress Maps”.

There are two laws that thwarted those plans.

The “Jones Act”: A US citizen cannot be transported from a US port to another US port on a foreign vessel. This is to help tilt the table in favor of US carriers, so foreign-flagged vessels, paying fewer taxes, cannot take ferry business away from the US carriers. Okay, I get that.

We were hoping that I could claim that I was being transported from Xingang to Genoa, really, and who cared what happened in between. That was our argument. We lost that argument. So, the land trip from Houston to New Orleans was squashed, because the ship trip from New Orleans to Port Manatee puts myself and Rickmers in violation of the Jones Act.

Okay. So I am in Houston for a bit, quite all right. I might go visit NASA. Or go watch the Royals beat up on the Astros.

While my agent was discussing my case with the immigration officials, I said “well that’s okay, the one land trip from Port Manatee to Savannah was the one I really wanted, so as to see my family”.

The immigration folk said “Wait a minute, that trip is in violation of the PVSA.”

Of course. Why didn’t I think of that? But also, of course, “ignorance of the law is no excuse.” I’m glad they caught it.

The PVSA is the Passenger Vessel Services Act. It has the concept of an “intact” voyage and a “broken” voyage.

For the voyage to remain “intact”, the passenger must depart on the same vessel on which he/she arrived, at each port. The passenger can do all sorts of things in port, even stay in hotels, etc., but must get back on board in that same port.

If the passenger does not depart on the vessel upon which he/she arrived, this “breaks” the voyage. Once the voyage is “broken”, the passenger cannot rejoin the vessel until the vessel is at its last US port, such that now the vessel is sailing to a foreign port. If the passenger does this, there is no PVSA violation.

Whew. I guess this is also protection for US interests somehow, although I don’t quite understand how much more it does than the Jones Act. No sense to dwell, though, ’tis wha’ ’tis.

Oh. We also changed our routes slightly. We go to Philadelphia earlier, and leave US from Morehead City. We also changed the order of stops in Europe slightly.

So, I am going to disembark in Port Manatee, and catch up to the Rickmers Antwerp in Morehead City. I will skip the visits to Savannah and Philadelphia. Not too bad – I had wanted to visit Savannah, had never been there, but I have been to Philadelphia many times. I need to figure out the “how and when” of travel to Morehead City, but it is not difficult.

These new plans are shown on the map labeled “Map 2016-04-13”, also in “Raw Photos>Cooked>Progress Maps”.

This voyage has been all about change. That fact is interesting on its own.