Georgia Tech Faculty Member Was On Cruise Ship Battered By Winter Storm

A Georgia Tech faculty member aboard the Royal Caribbean cruise ship that was battered by a winter storm, injuring four passengers and damaging the ship, said he didn’t fault the cruise line, despite critics who say that there was ample evidence it was heading toward potentially dangerous waters.

Associate Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Steven P. Girardot went on the Florida-bound Anthem of the Seas with his husband for an early one-year anniversary trip. The cruise left Bayonne, New Jersey, on Saturday and headed south for Florida and the Bahamas.

On Sunday, Girardot went for a late lunch, and “that’s when we started to notice that the ship was really starting to rock,” he told Patch.

“I walked outside on the upper deck, and there was just water everywhere, the rain was coming down really hard,” he said. “So I came back inside, and the boat was starting to move back and forth pretty roughly.”

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The cruise ship was caught in a winter storm off the coast of the Carolinas. The captain announced that everyone needed to stay in their cabins indefinitely.

“One of my best analogies is that it felt like being on a roller coaster,” Girardot said. “You’re kind of just going up and down and up and down. Except it’s a roller coaster for 12 straight hours that just wouldn’t stop.”

As the storm got worse, the captain’s updates turned into updates from the cruise director.

“It’s one of those feelings that you want to talk yourself out of. You start to think, ’When was the last time you read of a cruise ship sinking and everybody dying?” he said. “In terms of cruise ships sailing into a storm and being wiped out, the Titanic is the only one I could think of.”

A cruise ship spokesperson said that the storm conditions were stronger than initially expected, and wind speeds were greater than were forecasted.

Another passenger told Patch, though, that the ship never should have left port, because the NOAA had been forecasting the storm for day.

The ship ended up turning around and returned Wednesday to Bayonne. Passengers were refunded the total cost of the trip and given a voucher for 50 percent off of a future cruise.

“At the end of the day, I think they did the best they could,” Girardot said.

“I would like to think that the captain wouldn’t risk his own life plus 5,000 other people’s lives if they thought the storm was going to be the level that it ended up being.”