Craziness at Sea

Faith Covenant Church's colorful community lunch in St. Petersburg, FL

Our still intact ship, the Ryndam, in port in Key West

My brothers who got into a show on the ship - now you all see what I have to deal with on family holidays!

The beautiful beach we were snorkeling from on Thanksgiving in Honduras

Well, I never thought I’d be writing this blog. Crazy stuff happens sometimes, I guess!

After I got back from the MN, IA, WI tour, I flew to Florida and sang at Faith Covenant Church in St. Petersburg – great church with great people, and they have this cool community lunch afterward right in the parking lot with all these picnic tables and we met more great people there. I’m really looking forward to returning!

After that, my family and I went immediately to the Tampa Port Authority and boarded a ship for a Caribbean cruise. You see, my darling 91 year old grandma decided that she still likes to cruise and she wanted to go with all of us, so she and my mom took our entire family of 19 on a cruise for Thanksgiving. It was my mom, my brothers and their families, and my uncle, and we all had a blast.

The last day on the ship was at sea and we were just cruising home in open waters to get in on Sunday morning. Saturday morning at about 5:30 we heard this terrible grating/crushing sound that woke us all up. My younger daughter jumped in bed with us saying “what was that?!” and I, of course, being mostly asleep said, “I’m sure it’s nothing, go back to sleep.” She was too scared to go to sleep at which point my older daughter said,
“I think we hit an iceberg!”

After we explained that it was hard to find an iceberg to hit in the Caribbean, everyone tried to go back to sleep, but in the back of my head I was thinking, “What could we possibly have hit in open water? What could make that sound?”

The kids all woke up around 7:30, and we were just coming to when they made an announcement ship-wide, even in our rooms which they never did. It was the captain saying that a rear anchor had been deployed at 5:30 in the morning (our room was in the back which explained why it was so loud) and that a life-ring was missing. He had turned the boat around to inspect the area where the life-ring was deployed and if no one came forward with information, he would be forced to muster the entire ship to make sure everyone was on board.

Well, no one came forward and we all had to muster on deck until they accounted for all passengers and crew, just under 2000 people. We were all worried someone had gone overboard, but finally they said everyone was accounted for and we went up and got breakfast and the rest of the day continued normally. I wondered what happened, though.

Today, I found out. One of my siblings saw this on the news and forwarded it to me – the story of what really happened. They said the guy was drunk, but he knew how to break into a restricted area, had gloves (who’s carrying gloves on a Caribbean cruise??) and went through all the steps to deploy the anchor. I guess it could have sunk the ship. I have a hard time believing his story. I’ll be interested to see what happens with it. Just thanking the Lord that we’re all okay!

One Response to “Craziness at Sea”

  1. Patti DeFelicis says:

    Wow, Jennifer, THAT is CRAZY! So glad you are all safe! I loved the pictures, so beautiful!

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