itsandreas

I don’t often post publicly but as one of the guests onboard during the Celebrity Constellation’s allision with the Costa Magica, I have nothing but praise for the crew.

When we heard the moorings snap and felt the ship list I went straight up to the Reflections lounge.  By the time I got there, they had already dropped anchor and started the bow thrusters to keep us in position.  The bridge crew had the ship positionally stable within 3 minutes from the failure of the moorings, all without assistance of tugs.

What can’t really be seen in the videos is how close we came to the peer on the opposite side with our bow.  We were within 10 ft of the boats on that peer.  To use an analogy, the master was threading a needle - keeping a nearly 1000 ft vessel in a space with only about 50 ft to spare.

I can’t say that there was major damage.  The damage to the Costa Magica was less than 30 ft, mainly on the railing of the bow.  Costa cruiselines themselves have called the damage “slight”.  There was no damage evident to guests on board the Celebrity Constellation.  Obviously, the Port Office cleared both vessels to sail after the allision, so the serviceability of both ships was not compromised.  In fact, the Celebrity Constellation is currently on its way to Crete.

To give some context to the severity of the meteorological conditions - wind was 50 kph gusting to 70 kph at the time of the allision.  The winds stayed above 40 kph until about 2 AM.  The squall had actually caused another ship (a cargo carrier) to break it moorings and had toppled over stacks of shipping containers in the port.  For extended periods, the wind also caused the piers to flood by up to two feet of water.  Numerous trees in the town of La Spezia were either uprooted or snapped in half.  Remember, the is La Spezia - the geographically well-sheltered port that is used by the Italian Naval Academy for training because of the sheltered conditions.

I believe that it was the dangerous conditions on the pier that contributed to the delays in getting passengers off.  The Port Office wouldn’t open the port or allow passengers to disembark when there was still a considerable risk to their safety.  I understand that, from Celebrity’s perspective, all the necessary arrangements had been made.

From my perspective, the official communication was clear.  For example, Paul asked guests not to come down to try and disembark until a further announcement was made three times.  If anyone was stuck in chaotic queuing it was due to the fact that they didn’t follow crew instructions.

I have an aviation background and we have a saying that it is primary duty of the pilot to fly the plane; a good landing is one where everyone is safe and a great landing is one where you can use the plane again.  In this case the crew saved the ship in treacherous conditions, without loss of life and in a way that resulted in a few hours delay.  Some passengers even got into the airport earlier that they would have if everything went to plan!

I might have a glass half full perspective on this but I can honestly say I’m looking forward to rejoining the ship and crew in about  ten days time, when it will head off to the Suez Canal and United Arab Emirates.  This crew showed that the can face and overcome life threatening conditions.

Hi guys,

Wonderful to see a roll call started. We booked on the first day the cruise was listed and have been watching the cruise critic group for cruise without much hope of their being "family" on board.

To the introductions, I'm Andreas (35), travelling with Michael (32) from sunny Queensland, we've been together for 6 or 7 years.

Can't say we are as glamorous as some of the other guests described - TV presenters, composers and fly boys - but we like travel and having a good time so can be pretty fun to be around.

I'm quite jealous that you guys got free drinks packages - they are expensive but worth it.

Hope we might be able to catch up together on board - there are a lot of sea days that could get boring with out friends.

Cheers

Andreas