South Florida is on the verge of a major disaster. Thousands of people have been stranded at Miami International Airport because of flight cancellations, lack of available seat space, and simply because the area hotels have closed and the guests have had to leave. Those people had no alternative but to head for the airport and hope for the best or move into a shelter. There are no rental cars, fuel is becoming difficult to obtain because of the mass evacution taking place over the past few days.
So, on top of all this a scumbag cruise ship company that was happy to load a few thousand passengers decided to head back to Miami and dump them on the dock. Where did all those folks go? Where would they or could they go but MIA and join the thousands already there with hopes for a chance at a flight out of town to anywhere out of the path of Irma.
Royal Caribbean knew Irma was coming, they knew that Miami would be a disaster area but the greed that typifies the cruise industry guided their choices so they turned around and jettisoned the human cargo to cut their own financial risk.
I wish the port of Miami had refused the ship entry, Royal Caribbean should have been forced to house and feed those people for at least the length of the cruise they paid for. Instead they chose to add more thousands of people to the misery of the thousands already at risk in the area. I sincerely hope that every single one of those passengers file suit against Royal Caribbean for every condition that the worst junkyard dog lawyer (and Florida is famous for having the worst of the species in abundance) can conceive.
They should have pulled into Miami, discharged any passenger who wanted off and then take the rest away from South Florida and up to Norfolk, Baltimore, Philly, or NYC. At least then those people could get home instead of being stranded at the MIA airport.
At time of posting, marinetraffic.com shows Enchantment OTS off Key Largo heading SSW at 15.8 knots with a declared destination of “Safe Waters.” About 20 nm behind her, heading due S is the Grand Celebration, a 30-year-old vessel making 15 kt with a declared destination of “Cruise to Nowhere.” Looks like both of them will reach the end of the Keys uncomfortably close to the forecast arrival of tropical storm force winds.
Grand Celebration is off Key Largo doing ~13kts at 15:17 Eastern Time. Cutting it a bit fine. Cue Love Boat theme. Not much additional AIS traffic in the Straits of Florida at this time.
I don’t really want to hear they sank while running away but I sincerely hope they suffer multi million$ in storm damage and even more millions in vomit cleanup and lawsuits from those they marooned in the worst of circumstances.
I think that you are being a bit harsh.
I recently (could be somewhere within the last 5 to15 years) was at sea with an engineer who had been on one of these Plastic Palaces; '
'5,000 passengers, minimum of 10,000, shits a day.
Excluding crew.
Captain Bligh used to go and poo on the anchor.
Just to keep the cable moist.
