Ms.Eva

Thank you to all who have posted here; I like reading all views and opinions.  
When you take a cruise, when you're at sea, stuff happens.

In early January 2008, my mother and two of our friends were returning from a Caribbean holiday cruise on the Noordam, at the time is was a pretty new ship from Holland America.  We had just left the last port, San Juan when BAM, suddenly we hit high seas.  The ship started rocking, it was so bad that many people got sick; the show couldn't go on because of the sea conditions, but the crew was great, they were very helpful.  I was afraid it was going to get worse as we headed north.  I got seasick and one of the servers gave me ginger, a green apple and salt, which made me feel a bit better.  My mom and I were able to watch one of those Bourne Identity movies (lots of action, not much dialogue), with the satellite going in and out, I had to take a Dramamine and I went to sleep.  The next day the seas were calm, when we got to the north Atlantic, even calmer.  

When you're at sea, anything is possible.

Her scheduled departure time from St Maarten is 6pm

Sorry, I looked at PTV which had 1500, but when I looked at the QM2 Facebook page it had ETD 1700 local time.

Though probably just standard procedure after someone has gone missing off a ship, there is a forensic unit aboard the ship today in St. Marten.

 

I have heard no additional details about the missing lady.

 

Roland787

Is that why the ship hasn't left yet? I thought it was supposed to leave at 3pm.

Might not be healthy but I am sure it does what prunes are supposed to do.:D

Correct, and that's why you drink it. :D

Actually I could get cranberry juice in King's Court this past cruise; they had apple juice too.

Thanks, I'll try Chefs Galley next time.

Just came back from QM2, five day cruise. NYC-Nova Halifax Nova Scotia-Boston-NYC. All in all my mother and I had a lovely time; cool in Nova Scotia, very warm in Boston; we made great use of our balcony. I took a spa pass because I love the therapy pool and I've been having trouble with my knee lately.

As I said, it was a lovely cruise, but one thing struck me as odd. Yesterday morning, in King's Court, I asked one of the servers for a glass of prune juice for my mother, since it wasn't one of the selections on the juice machine. I asked three servers, none seemed to know what I was talking about. Finally, another passenger, a very nice lady, told me that I needed to go downstairs to the Britannia restaurant and they would have it. I went downstairs and asked the maitre d, who said yes, he would get me a glass of prune juice. After a short wait, a server came, with the glass of the precious prune juice on a tray and I took it up to my mother (after I thanked everyone of course).

But my question is, why no prune juice in King's Court? And why didn't any of the servers tell me that I had to go downstairs to Britannia? She's never had a problem getting prune juice on any of the other cruises we've been on.(NCL, HAL, Royal, Celebrity) This was our fifth time on QM2, the last time was in 2011, no problem with prune juice then.

Sounds like the two friends with her went to bed and she stayed out. Aparantly she climbed on the railing, sitting on the rail and fell in backwards. There was many hours of drinking that day. I think it was a tragic case of drunken misjudgment that cost her life.

I agree with this Sewingmama. Sometimes when people go on vacation, they act in ways they would not act in their home towns. On cruise ships I have seen people eat until they threw up, drink until they could not stand. Some people have an attitude like, "I'm on Vacay, I will do whatever I want!" They think food has no calories, that alcohol won't get them drunk, they'll walk alone on the ship at 2, 3am in the morning and think nothing of it. I don't know what happened to this lady, maybe we will find out, maybe we will never find out. I just feel bad for her family, especially her children, who might never know what happened to their mother.

Been following this thread since Friday, how sad. It's a shame she's lost her life, and left her husband and children to always kind of wonder what exactly happened and what was she thinking. I know it was reported that she sat on a railing and fell backwards. SO much speculation on here that maybe she drank to much. Why was she alone? In the end, none of it makes a difference. She did something stupid and unfortunately lost her life for it. We've all done stupid things, hindsight is 20/20. There is a lot of stupid stuff I've done, and looking back I think about how much of a different outcome there could've been. So regardless if she was drunk, suicidal, or just not thinking... a life was lost. Young kids now don't have their mother and a man is widowed. There seems to be a lot of arguing on this thread about this law and that law. Truth is, it just doesn't matter at the end of the day. She's gone and bickering and go back and forth about "woulda coulda shoulda's" won't bring her back. My thoughts and prayers are with her family, I hope they can find some sort of peace in all of this.

This is very true Jackie81, at the end of the day, a young woman lost her life.

I'm sorry you were sick on the last day. That's no fun. I hope you are feeling better now.

I was on the Breakaway in 2013 with my mom. It was okay for me but not for her (I was 54 at the time), we too prefer the smaller ships with fewer passengers.

WABC-NY News had a live reporter in Bayonne this morning interviewing passengers getting off the ship. I also saw it mentioned on Good Morning America before I left for work. So some of the press is still covering it.

WNBC-NY were also talking about it this morning, before I left at 6:30am. I bet they mentioned it on the Today show.

nbc is such a liberal station. They don't care. Some other station are like that but the passenger stick up for them. There was live from Fox and Abc. They just want to know what went wrong but praised the captain and crews. They all will return to cruising.

What does that have to do with being liberal?

I think most news stations want the most sensationalized stuff on the air in order to get more viewers. I don't think Nancy Grace is liberal at all and she went off on Royal on Monday night, saying things like. "My twins lives could have been in danger!" I was like, calm down lady, take a chill pill.

Just another worthless politician being another worthless idiot........

You got that right, maybe he was watching Nancy Grace on Monday night...OMG, what hysterics. I thought it was a Saturday Night Live sketch.:D

Ugh, good thing you didn't see what Nancy Grace was saying about this cruise, on Monday. That woman has become a joke and not a good one. Talk about being overly dramatic, plus as she was talking they showed a clip from the movies "Poseidon Adventure" and "The Perfect Storm." Really?

Just my little two cents:

I have cruised on HAL five times on three different ships (the Rotterdamn two times, the Noordam two times and the Veendam once). The cruise on the Noordam, in 2007-2008 was my first Christmas cruise and I loved it. I wished I could have gone again for Christmas, unfortunately, HAL doesn't seem to sail out of NYC anymore and my mother and I don't want to fly. We've been on Cunard and last year on NCL out of NYC.

Anyway, HAL is my favorite cruise line. What I like the most are the movies, every night at 10pm. Since I cruise with my mom, a lot of time she doesn't want to do much in the evening, which means that I'm on my own after the show; I'm shy and an introvert, I don't like the casino and not too good a trivia, so for me, the movies were perfect because I had something to do every night.

I'm not a foodie so food isn't that much of an issue for me.

Now if HAL would leave out of NYC again, I'd be a happy woman.

No passengers on this one. Crew only.

Thank you for that. I was wondering why the Gem is still sitting in port. I thought it was to leave at 1pm, but maybe there's no rush since it's going into dry dock.

Now the dockyard camera is offline, the site says major roof damage.

Sounds like you are talking about HAL's Noordam - we sailed her south out of New York in January 2007 and again in 2008. I recall the 2007 muster drill on deck with the wind howling down the Hudson. And that first night we ran through heavy seas - there was green water outside my window that first morning as we plowed through 30+ foot seas. It made getting into the Gulf Stream that afternoon feel like magic.

 

Too bad HAL gave up that itinerary.

Yes, you are correct. It was the Noordam. February 2007 and Christmas to New Years, 2007-2008. Heavy sees on the Christmas cruise when we left San Juan, heading back to NYC. The sea was so rough the stage show was cancelled. But that was only one night and all became calm once we were in the North Atlantic.

I'm upset HAL gave up that itinerary too. :(

Seadog67, my mother and I were reading this all week. I want to know something about the Haven. Is it very fancy? My mom thinks it might be too high end for her. So I'm curious.

In 2007, during a very, very cold winter in NY, my mother and I went to the Caribbean on a HAL ship. The day we left it was 12 degrees Fahrenheit. Our muster drill was held outside, yuk.

However in about 2 days the weather was warm and I forgot all about the cold, cold Northeast.

The only bad thing about going to the Caribbean during the winter is coming back and stepping off the ship and it's freezing outside. Other than that shock, it's all good. :)

Thanks for this blog Seadog.

Wish I were in Bermuda right now; need to go to Carole Holding's store and get some of her awesome jellies (she doesn't ship to the USA).

I love people who remember Bob Ross too. :D

Queen Mary 2 (QM2) is a completely different type of ship. She was designed and built a decade earlier for a differing clientele, predominantly older Brits. It's not really sensible to compare her to Breakaway, a much newer ship aimed at American families.

 

With no question NCL is the better option for "t-shirts and shorts." After a while the formality of Cunard seems a bit pretentious, but that's just my opinion.

 

I've done 10 cruises on QM2, and she has many, many design issues of her own. Breakaway is a much better cruise ship in my opinion. QM2 suffers greatly from all of the compromises her designers made to make her a "liner."

The reason I mentioned the QM2 was because the QM2 is larger than the BA, yet the BA has more passengers. I never felt crowded on the QM2 or on the Gem the way I did on the BA. However some of that could have been the time of year I was on the BA, which was in July.

Ms.Eva I'm glad you like the Gem. So you enjoyed the Queen Mary 11 as well? Is that ship too fancy though? If so, we would probably feel too out of place. We are just down to earth tee shirt and shorts type of people.

I like QM2 because the ship is large but doesn't feel crowded, IMO the BA felt too crowded.

I like the Gem because it didn't feel crowded, and it's a relaxed ship. To me anybody can wear anything and be "down to earth." For me, tee shirts and shorts are relaxed, so for that, I go for the Gem.

Yes CanadaJulie my husband and I agree with you on everything but the adult pool. We don't want kids in the adults only pool. There aren't enough pools on ships as it is. A lot of times the kids will be in the hot tubs when they are not allowed due to age requirements, but they are always in there anyways. Can't stand it! The Breakaway was the worst style of ship we have ever been on. We said we would never do NCL again because of it. But, then I heard a lot of great reviews about the NCL Gem, so long and behold we are going on it in December. We got a super good deal with free ultimate beverage packages, so we couldn't pass it up. Carnival is known for having bigger rooms. Breakaway was very obvious that they were just trying to make more rooms on the ship so they could pack more buying cruisers in like sardines to make more money.

I agree with you. I think the Breakaway is too small a ship for the number of passengers they have. I've been on the Queen Mary II and that ship is larger than the Breakaway but has less passengers, I've never felt like a sardine on that ship. And why do they just have two elevator banks on that ship? That seemed weird to me.

I almost said "no" to NCL, but we were on the Gem last December and had a great time. I love the Gem.

Seadog67, loved your pictures of St. George. Haven't been there since 2001, though I've been back to Bermuda in 2012 and 2013. Next time there, have to re-visit that place. I remember the stocks and the church. :)

We walked out of Rock of Ages. Horrible!

I'm not surprised by this. If you're not into that type of music, it is horrible. I loved it, but my mother hated it.

I do like the BA, but the entertainment isn't for me or my mother. I'm used to "traditional" cruises where there are two shows a night and every night is a different type of show. There are so many times you can go see "Burn the Floor" and "Second City." But that's just me.