Translation: the jaunt towards Key West burned up an extra 10,000 gallons of fuel, Captain. HQ says we crawl back to port to make up the difference.
That was what I was thinking too. All in all I completely understand what we did. The thing I didn’t like was that they did not keep passengers very well informed.
If anything, I’d say that the ship might be more stable if it moves at a slow speed through the waves.
I’ll stick to scenarios where I’m rich enough to have my own yacht.
Getting into Mexico isn’t the problem; it’s getting back into the US. The State Department would’ve had to ship consular staff down to Progreso (the Mexican port they considered) to issue emergency travel documents to those passengers.
Unless the ship happens to have a helipad–and one big enough for the responding helicopter–there really aren’t any all that safe options other than remaining on the vessel. Getting winched up into a helicopter from a ship’s deck isn’t just simply throwing a rope down and shimmying up said rope. Neither the helicopter nor the ship is an immobile platform.
Even if the ship does have a helipad big enough for the responding helicopter to actually land on the ship, that also is not a cake-walk. It may not present any dangers to you personally; however, to the crew on the helicopter and the “helo stations” crew on the ship, it’s not perfectly safe. Again, neither the helicopter nor the ship is an immobile platform.
Getting winched up out of the water also is dangerous; it’s just less dangerous than drowning in the water. As to how one ends up in the water, jumping off the ship isn’t all that safe. There’s that whole impact thing as hitting the water from a great height, unless you’re an incredibly skilled cliff diver, is nothign at all like cliff diving.
Maybe the captain decided that it’d be okay to use nets or you happened to find out where the cargo nets are stored (assuming the ship even has cargo nets) and managed to all by yourself deploy a net over the side of the stricken ship. So you’re going to climb down that net and–do what exactly? If there’s no boat there, you’re going to just float until all that nice friendly marine life comes along and pushes you ashore? That’s assuming, of course, that you didn’t happen to fall on your way down the net. How strong are you? How long and how far can you swim?
Maybe you discovered where the Pilot’s Ladder (some folks call it a Jacob’s Ladder) is stored and broke into the locker and somehow managed to deploy it safely. You have similar problems to the cargo net option.
Any options other than walking down the ship’s brow while the ship is moored at a pier will only be used if the alternative to taking them is worse than the risks involved in taking them.
In short, you’re not getting off that ship safely unless and until the ship’s captain determines that you’re getting off that ship in a safe manner of his, not your, choosing. He is responsible for your safety and, unless he’s a Schettino clone, most likely takes that responsibility very seriously. Deadly seriously, in fact.
The ship’s stabilizers were also knocked out of commission. Not to mention that the ship is floating in an ocean. It’s not just sitting there like something left on a floor.
Seems like 4 hours is a really long time to let 4000 people off a ship. Is that the normal time?
It takes a long time to load and unload one of those monsters, yes, even when you have full baggage-handing, elevator, etc. capacity. Typically, your luggage stays with you until you get to a certain check-in point, then it goes in one of the cargo doors for delivery to your room within a few hours, and you go in a passenger door, typically to a holding area in a dining or common area until the rooms are finished from the last cruise. On debarking, you send your luggage down at bedtime (keeping just a single bag you muscle yourself), and then go down in designated shifts to the exit deck and the gangplank, and claim your luggage from the holding area.
On a good day, figure 1500 people an hour. On this ship… figure somewhat less. Four hours to get the ship mostly cleared is probably better than to be expected.
I’ve been on several large cruises. Four hours is very typical. Even slightly faster than normal, in fact.
On a normal cruise they group the passengers in disembarkation groups, and each group has a specific time slot. Because if everyone tried to get off at once the chaos would be unimaginable.
Also, in many cases there are buses for air transfers, and there are not enough to take everyone off at once.
I assume the crew took the bags the night before as usual, but that would be one hellish job with no elevators. And no air conditioning.
Both aircraft carriers on which I served did something similar to what suranyi posted. Most of the time, we were allowed off the ship in “liberty ports” or at the end of a deployment in “liberty groups.” The traditional way for that is to let those personnel whose wives had given birth while the ship was deployed to leave first, following that group would be senior officers and senior enlisted, then the next lower ranking group of officers and enlisted, finally an “all hands” permission. These announcements are spaced about an hour apart, IIRC. It realy does take a long time to get a few thousand people off a ship.
One time, a port-of-call to Mombasa, we had a “liberty lottery.” It sounded like a good idea and maybe it works elsewhere. But for our visit to Mombasa, it was a drastic failure. The entire crew, both the ship’s company and embarked commands, drew tickets (like the old movie tickets). The lower your number, the sooner you got off the ship. Well, the problem was there seemed to be some kind of port worker strike in Mombasa when we were there. My two best friends on the ship and I had numbers lower than 300. It took almost five hours for us to get off the ship because of the total incompetence of the replacement workers.
But are there not major costs associated with delays (reimbursement for missed return flights, perhaps)?
It might depend on the contract with the airline. Who needs it most at the time of negotiation? If it’s the airline, then maybe not.
In addition to what others have said, each passenger must be individually accounted for. When disembarking from a normal cruise, you enter your room key into a device at the gangway and your picture pops up on a screen. Security then clears you to depart. This same process happens when disembarking temporarily for a visit ashore. I would assume that, even though the passengers and crew were motivated to move quickly, the crew of the Triumph still documented the debarking of every individual. That is the only way they could be sure the ship was clear.
I was on that exact ship back in 03 or 04. You’re stuck, unless you could somehow sway the captain into consenting for the helicopter option.
The damn thing almost pulled a Poseidon Adventure on us too. A freak gust of wind on a clear day at sea broadsided us, and the ship listed violently for a full minute. I was in the bar on the main deck, and could see out both sides of the ship. On one side I could see only sky, and the other only water. Glasses and bottles went flying and shattered, doors slammed, and you needed to grab something to stay upright. As I was at the bar, and am a season professional, I prided myself on not losing a drop.
A ship dead in the water is ssubject to the wind and waves and will probably end sidewise th the waves. Then small waves will cause the ship to really rock. The stabalisers will not work with no way on.
We had a break down one time while we worked on one shaft the other engine had a dead slow bell just to keep the ship moving and pointed into the waves.
Huh. Learn something every day. From wiki - Ship stabilizers are fins mounted beneath the waterline and emerging laterally. In contemporary vessels, they may be gyroscopically controlled active fins, which have the capacity to change their angle of attack to counteract roll caused by wind or waves acting on the ship.
Do all modern cruise ships have gyroscopically controlled active fins?
Pretty much, yes. They were retrofitted to slightly older ships when the newer ones had proved the technology (and gotten reputations for almost eliminating seasickness); I think even the remaining former liners like QE2 have been fitted with stabilizing tech.
Earlier in our marriage, my wife swore she couldn’t look at a boat without getting sick, and had gotten seasick in a harbor cruise of her father’s naval craft (which I think was the freakin’ Enterprise). We took a fairly big chance on our first cruise and… no problem, even on the high-speed runs where the ship tends to bounce a bit.
We took a Feb cruise 4 years ago [damn, how time flies] and we left right after a snow storm, chugged through a cat 1 hurricane to arrive in an absolutely beautiful caribbean of clear blue skies, gentle blue seas and some cracking good rum. 
Returning to Port Newark to find snow again was a serious letdown though.