Pride of Hawaii

Norwegian Cruise Line's new ship, Pride of Hawaii, arrived in Kona for the first time today. The largest U.S flagged ship ever, it weighs 93,500 tons, carries up to 2,400 passengers, and has a crew of 1,000 mostly American workers. Norwegian has two other American ships that tour the islands, the Pride of America and the Pride of Aloha.

The only cruise ship I have every toured was the Norwegian Star. That ship doesn't sail under the U.S. flag so by law they have to visit a foreign port during every cruise. So they sail to Fanning Island in the Republic of the Kiribati, which is 850 miles south of the Big Island. The ship's hotel manager once told me they spend $200,000 on fuel for their week-long Hawaiian cruise, and $150,000 of that is spent going to Fanning Island. I don't know how true that is, but it seems like a hefty price to pay just to escape American taxes and labor laws. But what do I know? My only gripe with cruise ships is their stinky transport boats that smell up the bay while I am swimming and the poo-poo they dump in the water.

On a positive note, I recently met a doctor who does mission work on Fanning Island. Norwegian lets him travel for next to nothing and they've been really cooperative about transporting medical supplies to the island. He has some fascinating photos and stories about his work. A picture of the store room at the "hospital" has a few rusty shelves with half a dozen old bottles of some kind of stuff. That's it.