Voyager impacts pier departing Civitavecchia/Rome

[slidebite]

About an hour ago Voyager was departing Civitavecchia in some moderate winds and struck the pier right at the stern. Not sure if it's going to impact the current cruise any significant amount... or worse. Hopefully it's largely cosmetic and nothing serious.

[Travelcat2]

Thank you for letting use know..hope that she is okay!

[LAL Cruiser]

We are also onboard awaiting information. Our itinerary was already modified before this event, now there is no way that we can reach Naples(instead of Sorrento ) on time. Will this cruise even continue as damage seems serious.

[slidebite]

Latest news is it's cosmetic with no safety concerns, although significant hold up in port. Definitely an ugly bit of cosmetic damage if nothing else that will have to get repaired. Unfortunate, these ships have such nice lines. Hopefully they can repair it without hurting the schedules too much. Agreed with concern about Naples now. That port of call was cursed this trip!

 

I presume the pilot was in command at the time, suspect there will be some lawyers talking about this LOL!

[LAL Cruiser]

Captain's message was very short and vague. It's still very unclear what the result of this mishap will be. Probably won't know till the morning.

[captjohn]

The CAPTAIN is always in command.

• While the ship’s captain handles the job of navigating the ship in the water, when the situation gets risky or there is any situation which demands greater skill in the maneuvering of the ship, the shippilot acts as the person who advises the captain what route to take and what changes need to be made during ship’s routine maneuvering while entering or leaving a port.
  

 

Just to add we were just on the Seabourn Encore which suffered the same type of incident over a year ago in New Zealand and the "large dent " in the starboard aft corner is still there . Someone caught the action on a video that can be seen on YouTube.

[Travelcat2]

Thank you for posting that video. Am quite surprised that it has not been fixed.

[LAL Cruiser]

We remain at the port . The port must be open as a RCCL has arrived. No announcements yet so its still unclear if and when we are getting out of here and what the impact will be on the balance of the cruise. No info available from reception desk or tour desk.

[Guerncruising]

My wife and I were midships in the Horizon lounge at the time and I watched and heard it all happen. A lady close by fell out of her chair and my wife lost her champagne. The lady was fine.

At this moment we are awaiting further news but at least the weather’s fine.

[MsMermaid]

We just departed. There was damage to the bumper but inspection shows all is safe. So terribly sad we are missing this port. Going to Capri was the main reason I booked this cruise, and I know others felt the same with the big visitor spots like Pompei and Amalfi coast being missed. Wished they could have kept this port and dropped another less interesting one.

[slidebite]

Sort of agree, Pompeii was one of the big draws for us with this cruise. :(

 

Just ran into David Niven , the cruise director asked if he had a late night since he needed to come up with a sea day. He looked a little tired but managed a little smirk and said "Hey, in bed around 12:30, up by 6, regular day!"

[LAL Cruiser]

Agreed....missing Capri is not cool. Many passengers would have preferred to do Naples and skip catania. And, we could have departed Rome at 1100pm last night but captain chose not to. Disappointed.

[RachelG]

Sorry this happened. It will be interesting to find out exactly what happened. And I agree--missing Naples really sucks.

[Got2Cruise]

Sorry that this preventable accident happened. We always think it’s a non issue when arriving or departing port, and then this happens to remind us.

[BarbarianPaul]

On the Explorer a couple years ago, we also missed a port I was looking forward to, Go Island, near Malta. Instead we stayed overnight in Malta. The Captain said it was due to “high winds,” but an entire crew labored the entire next day fixing some sort of issue with the glass panels by the pool grill.

I didn’t feel the captain was being straightforward with us.

 

 

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[Sheltieluv]

Last Fall we had to overnight in New York City due to high winds/seas. We totally skipped Bermuda, which would have been our first port of call. Everyone was so disappointed, but of course the captain put our safety first, as he should. We ended up still having a wonderful cruise. Things happen that are beyond our control, and while it's disappointing to have to skip a much anticipated port, life goes on. Enjoy!

[Jason OKeefe]

During the early evening hours of September 25, Seven Seas Voyager encountered stronger than forecasted weather conditions during the ship's departure from Civitavecchia, Italy, and the ship's hull experienced minor damage. All guests and crew are safe and no injuries were reported. The ship's crew repaired the damage, which was isolated to a small area of the ship's portside stern area. Seven Seas Voyager is sailing to Catania, Sicily now for the next port of call on her itinerary. We apologize for the inconvenience to our guests on-board and appreciate their understanding of the situation.

[Travelcat2]

Very happy that no one was injured!

[BarbarianPaul]

During the early evening hours of September 25, Seven Seas Voyager encountered stronger than forecasted weather conditions during the ship's departure from Civitavecchia, Italy, and the ship's hull experienced minor damage. All guests and crew are safe and no injuries were reported. The ship's crew repaired the damage, which was isolated to a small area of the ship's portside stern area. Seven Seas Voyager is sailing to Catania, Sicily now for the next port of call on her itinerary. We apologize for the inconvenience to our guests on-board and appreciate their understanding of the situation.

 

 

 

Yes...good to hear! Am sure this will not go down as a gold star on the captain’s record.

 

 

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[MsMermaid]

I have absolutely no issues with the captain’s handling of this incident. He and the pilot evaluated wind conditions which were well within sailing limits. However at departure there was an unexpected and sustained wind gust occurring at a critical time in the departure process. I believe all his decisions were in the best interests of everyone, and while disappointed in missing our most anticipated port, I sure prefer he erred on the side of safety rather than be discussing this from a lifeboat!

[LAL Cruiser]

Lifeboat.....really? Not even close. We needlessly missed Naples, Capri, etc. The entire incident was not honestly handled. We sat in port for 9 hours after it reopened in Rome.

[slidebite]

For those interested in more info, it happened more or less like this, according to eyewitnesses and also the Captains report the following morning.... which collaborated the eyewitness reports.

 

The final hours leading up to the departure it was fairly windy with gusts @ 20+ knots. Upon departure, the ship had the assistance of a tug which pulled the ship to the starboard side away from the pier (into the wind) and the tug remained with Voyager as it starting moving forward under power (at a decent clip), and removed the lines attaching as Voyager neared the mouth of the port. At that time, moments after the tug removed the lines, a couple of major gusts of 40+ knots hit Voyager and caused the ship to go back towards the remaining pier, leading to the strike with the stern area on the port side. The ship then continued to rub along the pier periodically as it came to a full stop. The Captain then advised approximately an hour or so later there was an incident and that the port of Civitavecchia was closed due to weather and would reschedule departure. Even though the port reopened a short time later (there was marine traffic leaving before midnight) the Captain elected to remain in port overnight, presumably to have a better look at the damage in daylight and also give stakeholders a look/information as there was a beehive of activity at the stern area while at port that night and morning. This delay also caused missing the port of Naples in its entirety.

 

Interesting thing of note: That part of the pier where the collision happened was populated with 3 very large liners only an hour earlier. If Voyager would have collided with one of those it might have made this story even more interesting and a bad way! Thankfully, nothing worse happened.

 

Attached is a topside pic I took above the damage at the Horizon lounge deck.

Edited September 27, 2018 by slidebite

[pingpong1]

A little bit of "bondo" and some paint, and it'll look as good as new!

[Travelcat2]

While I am not 100% that I am remembering this correctly, when the Navigator either hit a rock or went aground a few months ago, the ship was held until it could be inspected. Perhaps, in addition to a safety issue, this was an insurance issue - needing to examine the damage prior to the ship(s) going back out to sea.

[RachelG]

I am pretty sure that after any accident with damage, the ship has to be inspected before it can leave port. The insurance agents would require this.