I was in a City wine bar drinking a glass of the house white with a friend who started telling me about her holiday last month.
She went on a cruise along the Norwegian coast on board Viking Sky. On Friday 22nd March they were sailing south expecting to dock at Tilbury on Tuesday. The sea was rough by dinner time. At breakfast on Saturday it was considerably worse but she did have her usual yogurt and scrambled eggs in the dining room. On returning to her cabin she found it in chaos with broken glass from cosmetics bottles and her things scattered. She cleared up stoically.
At 2.00 pm all passengers and crew (1,3730) were ordered to go to muster stations and wear life jackets. By now the ship’s engines had failed because of the stress caused by running when they were lifted out of the water by the waves. Also the oil-feed was aperiodically interrupted. The situation was extremely dangerous and she was somewhat apprehensive and would have been more so had she known they were 100 metres from rocks. The Captain threw out the anchors to stop the ship drifting onto them and this worked. During the night and following morning 479 passengers were winched onto helicopters and evacuated. My friend remained with the last 436 passengers and 458 crew members to see the arrival of a sea-going tug on Sunday afternoon. She had been at her muster station for twenty-six hours.
She told her story calmly and conveyed a sense of apprehension rather than fear as events unfolded. She reflected on the Captain’s actions. Of course he should not have set to sea in a vessel that is designed for coastal cruises and is not designed to withstand extreme weather. However, he was under pressure to deliver his passengers to Tilbury and pick up passengers for the next trip. He could have put into Bodø but there were technical difficulties to get the vessel out again which I don’t understand. He under-estimated the severity of the weather and was lucky that a deeply unpleasant and frightening episode did not become a tragedy with loss of life.
My friend will be taking a river cruise next time.
A Norwegian friend of mine who always laments the cost of booze in Norway told me that none of the Norwegian passengers who all had paid extra for the ‘drinks package’ on the cruise refused to evacuate the vessel by helicopter as there were still 3 days to go…………
Opinions are divided as to whether the Captain deserves a medal or ….
Apparently he did consult 2 local pilots before taking the unfortunate decision to sail.
She is an Ocean going vessel and The International Maritime Organisation is now urgently looking at automatic engine shut offs due to low oil levels.
One anchor + chain ended up lost overboard (since recovered) and the anchor which held was extremely bent!
Thank you. I hoped for an informed comment from somebody in the business and you have delivered. My interlocutor was unaware that the vessel is an ocean going vessel. By the way, I remember that losing an anchor overboard, twice, can happen to even the most experienced skipper…