Cruise: Day Eight

Sunday, 12 December

Day Eight – Alexandria (sort of)



Sleeping was pretty difficult; the extreme rocking made it hard to do anything other than doze on and off. A little before 3:00am, we were woken up by a large noise, followed by us moving with the bed across the stateroom! Back and forth we went as the boat tilted one way and then the other. It was very scary and I was shaking. I had one arm across the bed holding onto the back of Jerry’s t-shirt and the other arm out keeping me from slamming into the balcony door when the bed slid to that end of the room. In the middle of the sliding, elevator music started playing which was a little surreal. Apparently the phone had been knocked to speaker and we were listening to hold music or something. Everything was falling and sliding and then finally it stopped. We turned the lights on and the room was a mess! The floor was strewn with papers and shoes. The table was knocked over and against the door. All of the bathroom toiletries were all over the bathroom floor. The bed had slid a couple feet away from the headboard and was almost against the balcony doors and the nightstands were both tipped over. The light switch was hanging off the wall, with exposed wires, but still functioning.



A few minutes after the crazy rocking subsided, the captain of the ship addressed us all over the PA system. Apparently, we were heading into the port of Alexandria and it was littered with unanchored ships riding out the storm. It was impossible to continue into the port, so the ship had to be turned into the wind and the speed slowed down so much that the stabilizers couldn’t do their job. He assured us that everything was fine and made several announcements throughout the night, first telling everyone to go to their staterooms, then letting us know that our stateroom attendants would be checking on each room, and then telling us that a great deal of damage was sustained throughout the ship and that the crew was working on cleaning it up and assessing the damage. Too shaken up to fall back sleep right away, we started watching the karate kid.

 Around 7:00, we were told that an announcement would be made soon about arrangements for breakfast. Around 9:00 there was an announcement directing everyone to the main dining room for a limited self service breakfast. We skipped that entirely and took advantage of the calmer waters to get some sleep to help make up for the restless night. As the morning went on, it seemed unlikely that we would make it into the port of Alexandria today, if at all. If the weather wouldn’t cooperate, we were told that we’d proceed to Malta, where we’d have an extra day.

We left our room around noon and the effects of the night before were everywhere. There were bags of broken items at every landing. The giant Christmas tree in centrum had fallen and lay across the center of the centrum. Glass walls were shattered. Furniture broken.

Before

After

Jerry made a good point that we were lucky that it happened in the middle of the night, when most people were in their staterooms, really the safest place to be. So many people were out and exchanging stories of their experiences. We were pretty lucky, it seems. Many people were thrown from their beds and were then hit by falling TVs or had glasses hurled through the room. Our tv stayed in place (I think because Jerry had lodged some pillows in just to keep it from moving while we watched) and none of our glasses fell. I think that there were some older folks who suffered broken ribs, etc. When we got to the centrum, hundreds of people were waiting in line for the dining room to open for lunch. The line was a little intimidating so we went to the shorter line at the coffee place where they were distributing free lattes (no hot chocolate!) and cookies. Next to the coffee shop, the doors to the ship’s shops had been covered with paper…I suspect it was a mess inside. We wandered to the Colony Club, just to sit and passed a small mountain of broken furniture along the way. 



 We finally decided to brave the line to the dining room.  They were admitting guests 20 at a time to control the flow of the buffet. It was a small buffet, by cruise standards, but it was good and did the trick. Everything was served on paper. Two of our dining room table people joined us. After lunch, we went back to the stateroom, where we finished watching Karate Kid. In the afternoon, it was announced that the weather conditions were going to prevent us from proceeding to Egypt and that we would instead go directly to Malta, where we would spend two days instead of the scheduled one. Unfortunately, this meant more days at sea, and it was no surprise that most people just wanted to get off of the ship.

Dinner was more of the same…long lines and buffet, although this time there were glass plates and silverware. We went to our stateroom early that evening, started watching Knocked Up (one of the movies we brought with us) and slept for a long time.