~ * Cruise Question of the Day * ~

Princesslover · June 19, 2007

On my Caribbean Princess cruise we had a child that was very ill... She had to taken of the ship immediatly but we were in the middle of the ocean.. So then a helicopter came balanced above the upper decks and first got the child then went up a little.. and got down again to get the family! It wasn't a nice thing ofcourse but it was amazing to see how the ship went way fast to catch up the helicopter's speed.. Still a sad story though wouldn't want it to happen to me.. It ended all good by the way was broadcasted over the ship the next day.

CanadianCruiser · June 19, 2007

the suspense is killing me.....

Gregswife · June 19, 2007

Okay Frank - we're all waiting. Is this one of those "how do you keep an idiot in suspense" things?

Tinkerbell · June 19, 2007

*Insert "Jeopardy" theme music here* LOL

CanadianCruiser · June 19, 2007

ROTFLMAO....

Chucksta63 · June 19, 2007

Then Mom Yelled Bed Time........lol

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Tinkerbell · June 19, 2007

LMAO!!!

Ol39Capt · June 19, 2007

Sorry it took so long to get back...I had to finish cooking lunch for tomorrow, and get everything cleaned up and put away. Thank you for bearing with me.

And so....

As we tried to move around the deck we noticed that even our boots sounded like....muffeled. At that point every hair on my arms and on the back of my neck stood out so straight that it began to hurt, and the others were feeling the same thing. Everything seemed to be happening so quickly that we didn't even get a chance to be scared.

All of a sudden the boat seemed to ride up on a wave...but there were no waves...the sea was like a black glass mirror. Other than the stars and our own anchor light and the light coming from inside the wheel house and cabin, we couldn't see any other ships or boats anywhere on the full circle of the horizon. Another wave or swell lifted the boat again. This time we all moved to the rails ( sides ), to see if maybe it was a large whale moving around us...but saw nothing.

What seemed like just moments turned out to be almost 30 minutes and still it was dead calm. As we watched the water, one of the other guys kind of whispered to come over to where he was. We were now all standing at the back of the boat staring down at the water, watching lights...

I have seen many different types of marine life that light up the water as they move through it and have driven high speed boats at night and seen the phosphoresent glow of the water in my wake, I seen submarines surface at night with lights on and rising from hundreds of feet below...but I never have seen anything like this.

As we watched, the light did turn out to be little or large fish moving around below us, and then they all seemed to fade and move away, leaving the water black againg. We all kind of did a sigh of relief and gave that stupid little laugh, you know, like I wasn't scared....in the next second another swell lifted us again, but this time it got our attention....as we looked back down at the water we saw light, not fish light, but light from something really deep.

The light seemed to be round and as we moved around the deck to see how large it was, we realized that it not only was wider than our boat but it was longer too. We were having a hard time getting a good picture of what we were looking at so the Capt. said lets turn out some if not all our lights and just use flashlites go move around with and not to do too much of that. He egan to turn out the lights starting with all of the interior ones and finaly the anchor light. The anchor light is the hightest light on a boat, usually at the top of the mast or on smaller boats, on the stern. Our anchor light would throw out a dim 50 ft circle of light around the boat, kind of light a night light in your bathroom...

With the anchor light out you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, even if you were touching your nose, we're talking only star light. Then it started to get real bright. Remember that all the lights are OFF.

We can now see each other and are able to walk around without flashlights. The water all around the boat took on a glow that even today I can't put into words, but I could show you combinations of colors and you would get the idea. Again we started to move aroud to get an idea of how large this light is, but trying to get the feet to move was another thing. The calmness that we were feeling a few minutes ago along with the stupid giggles was gone. Every nerve, every hair, every mussel was on edge. My heart was pounding harder and harder and I was trying to slow it down, I thought that my ear drums were going to explode.

All of a sudden the light started to come closer to the surface and all we could do was freeze where we were, too scared to even think...then it just stopped, kind of floating; for lack of a better word; and it started to get brighter again...but then it just ......went.....took off......jetted.....zoomed......It headed due west. It went so fast that the only way we could tell direction was to watch it's light...and we watched it to the horizon.

As it left everything went to black again, there was NO swell or wave, there was NO noise, the water was still like glass, no wind. The Capt went and turned on the anchor light and just the map light in the wheelhouse. For over an hour no one said a word. The only thing I knew was that me, along with 5 other grown men needed to change our pants.

The boat was The Lady Jane, out of Tarpon Springs, Fl. 86 ft by 23 ft at the beam. She drew 8 1/2 ft of water. Set as a deep water fisher and trawler. Crew of 6. Capt. was 59 years old at the time, mate and wenchman 4 years younger, 2 other deck hands in there 40's, and me deck hand and cook. We shipped out for a 6 week run, this was the last large commerical fishing vessel I was on. I owned my own smaller boats after that...I have seen many things in the sea. I believe the Capt and mate have passed on, I don't know what happened to the other two men; I only ran into them a couple more times and they weren't working boats anymore...we didn't talk about that night....me...I guess I getting ready to go back to the sea, this time it's going to be a really big boat...