The Juneau Empire is reporting:
A cruise ship scraped the bottom of the Tracy Arm fjord Wednesday morning, forcing its crew to cut short its trip and call the U.S. Coast Guard for assistance.
The Spirit of Alaska called the Coast Guard around 8 a.m. Wednesday, Coast Guard Petty Officer Levi Read said.
The boat is owned by Seattle-based Cruise West, which says on its Web site that the 143-foot boat has a “shallow draft” that makes for “optimum wildlife viewing.”
There were 41 passengers on board and 22 crew members, Read said. He said there were no reported injuries.
After hitting bottom, the boat anchored and waited for an inspector from the Coast Guard and a commercial diver to survey the damage to the boat, Read said.
He said the Coast Guard had dispatched two boats and a helicopter to assist the boat. A tugboat was scheduled to pull the Spirit of Alaska back to Juneau on Wednesday evening, according to the Coast Guard.
A spokesman for Cruise West said Wednesday afternoon that the Spirit of Alaska was on the second day of a seven-day trip that was to start and end in Juneau.
The complete Juneau Empire post is here.
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This post was written by Richard Rodriguez, Rescue Tug Captain, and US Coast Guard approved instructor for License Training. You can read more of his articles at the BitterEnd of the net.
Tags: · alaska, alaska_cruise_ship, Cruise Ship, grounding, ship_grounding
The preliminary report on the Empress Of The North grounding and subsequent abandonment (no fatalities) was released by the NTSB today. The BBC reports;
Marino Cattiotti was put in charge for four hours because another navigator was ill, the National Transportation Safety Board report said.
More than 200 people were evacuated when the Empress of the North hit a rock 25 miles (40km) from Juneau.
The report called the designation of Mr Cattiotti as navigator “imprudent”.
Hull ripped
Mr Cattiotti was fresh out of a maritime academy, the National Transportation Safety Board preliminary report said.
It was his first voyage on the ship.
The report said instructors believed that “placing a recent graduate of the school with no watch experience outside of a training environment, on watch, at night, in pilotage waters, in an unfamiliar vessel, without any additional preparation and/or supervision, was imprudent”.
Mr Cattiotti had said he had not taken part in any drills or had any training on the Empress of the North.
Not that this is a surprise to gCaptain readers as we reported such in gCaptain’s 16th ever post, “Alaska Cruise Ship - New Mate, Wrong Turn” and also HERE back in May. What’s surprising is we have received insider knowledge that the Coast Guard had asked the young mate to voluntarily hand over his license and “find a new profession”. While this is standard operating procedure following an incident it is worrisome in cases like this. We are, however, happy to report that the young mate made the right choice in not handing over his license and is looking (or has found) a new job. No word on the Captain’s state of employment though.
Tags: · alaska_cruise_ship, Empress Of The North, empress_of_the_north_grounding, Lifesaving Incidents, maritime_academy, national_transportation_safety_board, ntsb
