There was nothing gentle about the rocking aboard the Anthem of the Seas, with 4500 passengers aboard the Royal Caribbean cruise ship when it hit the storm Sunday.
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Officials said inspectors will assess the extent of the ship’s damage and make sure all repairs are completed before the cruise ship can depart on its next voyage.
Anthem of the Seas docked in Bayonne, N.J., at 9 p.m. Wednesday and the ship will be inspected by the U.S. Coast Guard.
The ship left Bayonne on Saturday, Feb. 6, on its way to Florida, and encountered 100-plus-mile-per-hour winds and 30-foot waves off the coast of North Carolina before heading back.
In a statement after the ship arrived in New Jersey on Thursday, Royal Caribbean said that it would add resources at the Miami headquarters “to provide additional guidance to our ships’ captains”, and that the storm exposed gaps in its planning system.
A buoy in the Atlantic about 260 miles south of Cape Hatteras reported wave heights of 30 feet and wind gusts of 74 mph late Sunday, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Four of the 4,529 passengers on board sustained minor injuries, and public areas and cabins were damaged, according to Royal Caribbean.
Royal Caribbean is giving passengers their money back plus fifty percent of what they spent will be good toward another cruise, within a year.
Today I was interviewed by several local news stations in New York City, including the local CBS station channel 2 (video below) about the cruise line’s ill-fated decision to cruise into the storm.
Michael Lowry, hurricane specialist at The Weather Channel, tweeted a graphic that shaded the area in the high-wave zone, as well as the exact forecast issued three days ahead of the storm’s skirmish with Anthem of the Seas.
Posts on social media described conditions aboard the ship as “horrendous”, and weather forecasters said the storm set off a hurricane-force wind warning. It clearly demonstrates that the storm was predicted far enough in advance for the ship to have avoided danger.
They were stunned by what they saw when they were allowed out of their rooms after the ship made it through the storm.
Royal Caribbean is standing behind the captain and says it has now made changes to storm avoidance policies. “Clearly, due to the weather, we were unable to deliver the Royal Caribbean cruise vacation anticipated, and that we were looking forward to providing”.
“The winds were so strong that I thought the phone would blow from my hands”, Sam Lairson, of Ocean City, New Jersey, said in an email.
“That boat should have never gone out”, she said.
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We apologize for exposing our guests and crew to the weather they faced, and for what they went through.
