Major Incident with Canaveral Cruise Ship

[DebbyDiver]

I'm not getting on one of those either. Ugh, it's like being stuck at the mall for a week. No thanks.

I did experience a cruise ship heeling over like that once though. I did a Star Clipper cruise in December 2004 and they were racing the Royal Clipper. I don't remember how fast we were sailing, but it was REALLY fast. We were most definitely heeled way over to port. It was really a rush, I tell you.

We won. :14:

 

[S_SIMON]

please go into detail as to the definition of "list" . Is it a hard to sway to one side?

 

[JodiBB]

According to the cruiseboards I've been on, people from the ship actually logged in and were giving their accounts of what happened. One person said it was a 12 degree list. The chaos that ensued was the result of the crew aimlessly handing out life jackets, yet no muster drill was called. Also passengers must have been barefoot because there were a lot of bloody feet reported.

One passenger in their accounting said water got all the way up to the Promonade deck and stairwells looked like waterfalls!

 

[HNITSUJ]

This is just my take but from the brief description I have heard, it happened just after leaving port. Port Canaveral (for those who do not know) is a narrow waterway thats at best guess, a half a mile long. I am guessing as they exited the waterway, the ship was brought up to speed and one of the azipods got out of whack causing the list. I am guessing one may have turned abruptly to the left or right. The props are mounted backwards so they pull in leau of pushing. So I would guess a hydraulic failure would make it swing.

 

[simbrooks]

Listing is a sudden movement to one side of the other. It would take some pretty big waves to get that boat rocking though given its displacement, regardless of how high the superstructure is. I would prefer not to see boats built that way, a bit wider might help, but of course they might not fit so easily into the docks

As for the Port Canaveral shipping lane, its about 6 miles long in a near SE direction from the mouth. After this the floor should drop off pretty well outside of the sand bar that that whole collection of barrier islands are built with/upon. I cant see why they would head 118km SE of the port to turn NNE to head to NY, but i guess that is their route. The channel is only about 400 feet wide and is maintained at 44 feet below a 0 foot elevation (ie mid-tide). The dredging used to be done by pushing the material to the side of the channel, making banks on either side of the channel that are much shallower. Nowadays they use the good dredge material to build up certain areas within the port for on-going improvements and some of the rest they have a permitted area to dump the material. The channel is quite well marked, the only thing that would make the navigation an issue is a high wind pushing them off-course, otherwise its just a follow-the-bouys and you'll be fine passage, even in a boat that draws 30 feet.

 

[S_SIMON]

Thanks Simon....I wasn't clear on that. I didn't believe it "rolled" over literally, but I am not familiar with boating/ship terminology.

 

[mike_s]

First of all, they don't really use "rudders" anymore. Do you know what an azipod is??
.

Actually they still use rudders on most of the cruise ships. Only the 'newer' ships have Azipods on them. Many of the older ships still use conventional propulsion and steering. (shaft/screw and rudder). It's just you don't see/notice the older ships as much because all the TV ad's of course have the 'new' ships on them. I've been on two Royal Caribbean ships that were fairly old, built in the 80's

The Azipods are actually pretty cool and are making the transition into recreational boating also. A company in Europe couples the Volvo engine with an Azipod now on a 40 something foot yacht.

As cruise ships get bigger and bigger, the azipods and bow thrusters give them a lot of flexibility in maneuvering.

Thanks Simon....I wasn't clear on that. I didn't believe it "rolled" over literally, but I am not familiar with boating/ship terminology.

Actually from some of the media reports, they over played the events to make their story sell. CNN said for example that it "tipped over", which to most of us seems that it went "all the way over".

 

[deepstops]

Actually they still use rudders on most of the cruise ships. Only the 'newer' ships have Azipods on them.

Hence the use of the word anymore. We're talking about a ship that is a month old.

With a little further digging, I also found this ship's sister-ship had a similar (but not quite as bad) problem making a u-turn with a (unrelated) medical emergency onboard in Galveston last year.

 

[deepstops]

I would prefer not to see boats built that way, a bit wider might help, but of course they might not fit so easily into the docks

Until they make bigger locks in the Panama Canal.
RCCL already has two classes of ships that can't go through because of length and they won't take them around Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope so they stay in the Atlantic, Baltic, or the Med.
Hamilton Bermuda is even tighter than the Panama Canal width-wise.

 

[TxHockeyGuy]

If they had a stabilizer failure during a turning maneuver I could easily see this happening. Given their center of gravity being so high I see no way they could complete a maneuver at speed without them. I am sure once the ship started listing they stopped the turning maneuver but a ship that size doesn't respond like your car. It probably would have taken a few seconds for that command to start to take effect and the ship would have listed even more during that time. I don't see a single pod being able to do this and as was stated previously I don't believe the newer ships have rudders.

Of course I'm no expert, but I have been on one of these newer ships and anytime we made a turn it was quite noticeable, even with the stabilizers.