Royal Caribbean’s Anthem of the Seas returned home to Cape Liberty, New Jersey on February 10th evening and the cruise line is offering its guests and crew an apology and a promise to avoid similar situations in the future.
In a statement issued by Royal Caribbean, the company apologized for its ship encountering sustained 120-mph winds during a winter storm off the coast of the Carolinas.
“We apologize for exposing our guests and crew to the weather they faced, and for what they went through.”
Royal Caribbean also announced new plans to avoid storms like this with improved guidance.
Royal Caribbean, “identified gaps” in their planning system and acknowledged, “what happened this week showed that we need to do better.”
Furthermore, Royal Caribbean announced their are strengthening their storm avoidance policy, and have added resources at their Miami headquarters to provide additional guidance ships’ captains.
Much of the superficial damage to Anthem of the Seas has been repaired and the company expects Anthem of the Seas to resume her planned itinerary for next week’s cruise.
Sen. Bill Nelson has called for the National Transportation Safety Board to investigate the voyage that forced frightened passengers into their cabins overnight Sunday as their belongings flew about, waves rose as high as 30 feet, and winds howled outside, ABC news reports
“The thing about this storm was that it was forecast for days. So why in the world would a cruise ship with thousands of passengers go sailing right into it?” Nelson said Monday on the Senate floor, according to a news release from his office.
The National Weather Service’s Ocean Prediction Center had issued an alert for a strong storm four days in advance, Susan Buchanan with the weather service said. The first warning was issued Saturday for possible hurricane-force winds in the area the ship was scheduled to sail through.
The following video includes an interview with the Captain of Anthem of the Seas explaining how the storm developed.
Impressive interview with a professional/experienced mariner explaining what happened weather-wise. It appears that the right decisions – to turn back to port – were taken pending further expected weather development. In my view damages reported appear to be of mere cosmetic nature. To my mind, the vessel as such has functioned as designed and operated to encounter foul weather conditions and heavy seas.
Lessons learned is that all fancy decoration items must be suitable to go to sea and thus properly secured.
The interview was impressive indeed. You need professional and experienced master to explain to less professional viewers, why the ship turned back in anticipation of another low pressure system developing- much less severe, then the encountered one.
However viewers, who have similar experience in weather analyses and use of forecasting tools, programs and dedicated websites as Sailing weather for sailors, may come to less favorable conclusions and ask some inconvenient questions and come to a conclusion, that the master manipulated the graphic presentation in order to justify the decision to turn back.
1. For even unexperienced viewer the first weather chart used by master was a LARGE SCALE chart, showing in greater detail the development and future track of the system .
2. For experienced user, the master used for presentation the dedicated software, which assist masters of the ocean going vessels in accurate analyzing and predicting future behavior of weather systems.
3. The master stopped his graphic presentation and fast time- forward scroll of the picture on a large scale chart and then switched to:
4. Graphic presentation of the same area using website Sailing Weather – for sailors and adventurers – very nit website but designed to assist mostly, sailors and not masters of large ocean going vessels, as they use other professional tools, like the one showed at the beginning of the presentation.
5. The obvious and inconvenient question is: what has prevented the master to continue his presentation on a large scale weather chart, showing greater details and scrolling fast forward in time to see the future conditions??
6. The answer is , that the future conditions on this large scale chart would appear even for unexperienced viewer, much less dramatic as conditions already experienced and unexperienced viewer( pax) may question the decision to turn back .
7. The Sailing Weather website for this particular area offers a choice of large and small scale charts.
But the master used the smallest scale available showing much less details, in order to prove and justify decision to turn back, as on this chart the next storm appeared in red ( extreme conditions)
What would not show on larger scale charts- raising again some inconvenient questions.
8. In conclusion the Master was indeed very professiona,l as only professional can manipulate the TRUTH in such a way, to justify His or His superiors decision to turn back . It is obvious that he was successful in convincing less experienced viewers/readers.