After several years of challenges, the author’s mother and sister found themselves on board the Viking Sky as it nearly ran aground in Norway
They say bad things come in threes. I certainly hope that’s the case, as my family is pretty ready to be at the end of a challenging few years.
Bad Thing One was when my youngest sister, Holly, at the tender age of 33, was diagnosed with breast cancer (she is doing great, thankfully).
Bad Thing Two was when my parents’ house burned down in the Tubbs Fire in 2017.
And just two weeks ago we got to “enjoy” what we hope is the Third and Final Bad Thing, when my mother, Vicki, and Holly, were on board the cruise ship Viking Sky when it lost all engines and power and started to drift unmoored toward the jagged coast.
My mom is a veteran cruiser. She’s on her third decade and double digit number of cruises, and has her share of stories. My sister had always wanted to see the Northern Lights. So when a cruise came up that would allow them both to scratch their itch, they jumped at it.
Neither one had any concerns about the time of year or the location; after all, our entire family had once sailed across the North Atlantic during storm season. Cue Titanic jokes and lots of anti-nausea medication.
Staying behind would be myself, my other sister Laurel, and my father Steve. We’re a close family, with frequent phone calls and sisterly text chains. Still, I was fairly jarred when my phone rang at 8:15 a.m. on Saturday, March 22 and I saw it was Laurel calling me.
I had still been asleep, a rarity for me, so I was disoriented enough that when I answered, she asked me if I was OK.
“Sorry, yeah, I was just asleep,” I responded. And then she paused, and I was suddenly much more awake.
“Holly just sent me a text saying they’ve been told to abandon ship and that she loves us,” she said. “One of us needs to call Dad.”
I’m not a person prone to panic, but it was still an icy sensation down my spine. But it was also unbelievable. Titanic jokes aside, cruise ships are not known for their high degree of danger.
Laurel called our Dad, and I went to work trying to figure out what was going on.
In short order I determined that the ship had been caught in a “bomb cyclone” and all four engines had died, leaving the ship powerless to steer against the enormous waves, which Norwegian media was reporting as 26 feet high. It was tilting badly, and being pushed towards the Norwegian coast of jagged rocks and a low reef. Things were looking dire.
“Holly and I had had lunch and then she went to the room and she was going to change and go to the gym and I went to the movie theater to watch ‘Green Book,’” remembered Vicki. “I was into it for about half an hour and then suddenly I noticed the engines had gone silent and then the movie just cut out. That was the first sign. Everybody thought (the movie) had just gone bad and then within two minutes all hell broke loose.”
“I was in the family room area (of our room) and I was taking my time to change and the ship rolled really hard. We had a balcony, so I got up to look outside and all of a sudden I got blown across the room,” remembered Holly. “I hit the wall, all the glass came raining down, and there was glass everywhere. Then the table we would eat at came rushing towards me as I was on the ground, and I had to scramble out of the way.
“(The ship) was going back and forth, but I didn’t understand it was serious,” Holly continued. “I mean, I knew I almost got killed by a table but it didn’t cross my mind we’d have to abandon ship. But it was getting rockier and rockier and then I thought, ‘Oh no what if Mom tries to come to me, she can’t be walking in this.’”
They started calling for the passengers to get to their muster stations — places where you gather and put on your designated life jackets to await evacuation to your designated life boat — but Holly quickly realized that our mother would not be able to traverse in the wild conditions.
The movie theater was on one end of the ship, their cabin the other, and the muster station even farther up still. So, she determined the best thing was to get to our Mom in the theater. She started running.
“It was hard to get anywhere because it was rocking so much,” Holly said. “I had to run, and then sit down, and then run and then sit down because you couldn’t move, the ship was vertical. People were holding on and getting thrown all over the place, and the staff was yelling, and I was like ‘I have to get to my mom,’ and then they were like ‘OK, get to your mom.’ When I got to Mom she was just getting ready to come find me, and we were happy to see each other, then the theater went dark.”
Shortly after they reunited, the seven short and one long alarm bell signaling abandon ship went out over the loudspeakers, followed by the captain’s voice affirming, “This is your captain speaking, abandon ship, abandon ship.”
The captain said rescue helicopters would be evacuating people.
“Because the waves were so high, I knew we couldn’t use the lifeboats, I immediately realized those would just tip over because of the waves. But when he said 20 people at a time in the helicopters, you just thought ‘That’s crazy, there are 1,300 people on this ship,’” Vicki said.
While the theater was not their official muster station, they were told to stay put, as their muster station, the main restaurant, had suffered from broken windows and doors and was filling with icy water, rendering it unsafe. Staff started bringing in the lifejackets from the other muster station, along with people who were wet and cold and injured.
“My memory is not perfect,” said Holly. “But, at this point I think I still believed we were getting on those (life)boats. But, when I got to the theater (before the abandon ship signal had sounded), there was this noise we could hear. It was so loud it sounded like the ship was being ripped apart. We found out later it was the front anchor being lowered, but we didn’t know and I thought water was just going to rush in. They were desperately trying to lower the anchors in the front and back of the ship to stop us from drifting, and we could hear it scraping along the sea floor.”
Meanwhile back at home, I’d put on my reporter hat and done as much sleuthing as possible.
I’d discovered a cruiser’s internet chat room that had an ongoing thread about the disaster, and among the commenters were former Norwegian cruise ship captains, who were providing English translations of Norwegian news reports.
From that, I learned the ship was dead in the water, that it was pushing toward the coastline and that if the anchors didn’t catch, it would be dashed on the rocks. There were photos of the ship tilting wildly over the screaming surf.
Other boats were rushing to their aid, but there wasn’t much that could be done in the wild conditions.
Staring at my laptop screen and hitting refresh every 30 seconds, I willed the anchors to catch, the engines to turn on, something. Then at last, news.
With less than eight meters to spare, the anchors had caught and the ship had stopped its inexorable drift into disaster. Other ships had begun to gather around, but the conditions were dangerous.
Soon reports came in that the cargo ship Hagland Captain had capsized within a few hundred meters of the Viking Sky when its load of lumber became unbalanced, and rescue helicopters diverted to gather the nine crew members who were forced to jump into the frigid sea (they all survived).
The engineers on board the Viking Sky managed to get one engine up and running, stabilizing the ship even more. But it did little to alleviate the fear on board.
“It was a long time, 12 hours maybe, of being terrified,” Holly said. “I felt like we were going to capsize and topple over. Now I don’t know if cruise ships ever capsize, but in my mind I was sure we were going to capsize, the rocking was so extreme, I didn’t see how we couldn’t. And I thought the ship was damaged, there was so much noise, I though it was being pulled apart by the two anchors.
“I was sure we were going to die,” said Holly. “Mom didn’t think it but I surely did because of how extreme the rocking was and it just didn’t stop. And the fact they were using helicopters and the noises and the back and forth, the tension of holding on for hours. That amount of fear for that long that was the worst part.”
“I didn’t get to that place,” said Vicki. “It was more that I couldn’t see how we were getting out of it. The honest truth, and I don’t know if it’s like a spiritual inner knowing or just denial, but I didn’t think we would die. But, I had nothing to base that on. I was so distressed that Holly had to be there. I felt terrible that she had to be going through this and the other part was knowing how you all must be feeling. That was the worst part.”
Back home, how we were feeling was a combination of anxious and frustrated. Mainstream news had very little information, chat rooms and Twitter had the most up-to-date info, much to my journalistic disappointment. I saw them announce on the chat room they had restored partial power to three of the four engines, and they were motoring slowly out to sea to get away from the coast and to rendezvous with several tugboats.
They were still doing helicopter evacuations, and to Laurel and my horror we realized they were using a harness to hoist the passengers up into the aircraft, swinging them wildly over the churning sea.
We could not imagine our intensely agoraphobic mother tolerating such a thing (to be honest, we couldn’t imagine the average elderly cruise ship passenger tolerating it, but some 400-plus did). What we didn’t realize at the time is that they were unaware of the helicopter evacuation.
Then began a conversation among ship’s captains online about The Turn. Apparently the best chance for the ship was for the captain to undertake a 180 degree turn out to sea in order to line up for a slightly treacherous entry into the port of Molde.
If he could manage this turn, the ship would be safely in port in a matter of hours, towed by the tugs. If he couldn’t, it would be days to weeks of a slow and dangerous journey to Starvanger much further to the south.
With the ship crippled and the seas still wild, success was far from guaranteed.
On board the ship, the passengers had been alerted to the impending maneuver and they knew it was serious, but the consequences of failure had not been shared.
“(The captain) told us right before. He said, ‘I need everybody to stay in their seat, do not get up, this could be rough’ and the next thing he said was we’ve done it, and we didn’t feel a thing. We learned after that was a really dicey moment,” Vicki said.
I was following along on a livestream online, showing the ship’s position as it inched around. When the turn had, apparently, been completed successfully, the peanut gallery of captains praised the skill of the Viking Sky’s master.
Once the turn was done, only a few final evacuations by helicopter were offered. My mother and sister had their names called, but when they realized what that involved they balked, hard.
“I saw that rope dangling off the helicopter and I said, ‘Nope, my mom isn’t doing that, but they kept shoving me forward, and I said, ‘I’m not going without my mom, so stop pushing me.’ I wonder how many people were forced to do it,’” said Holly.
Shortly afterward, the tugboats were able to attach their lines, and the Viking Sky was partially towed and partially sailed into the port of Molde. Laurel and I watched it live on the internet, as the ship glided into port. The scenery was stunning and the water as smooth as glass. If not for all the visible broken windows, it would have been a lovely scene.
Molde is a small town, and while they were offered a hotel room, once the ship was in port, Holly and Vicki elected to stay in their room, being hastily cleaned by the crew, and sleep and pack. The furniture was mostly righted, but broken glass littered the floor, meaning shoes were worn at all times, even in the shower.
They were then placed on a charter flight from the Molde airport to London, where they had already planned a one night stopover post cruise, which suddenly felt like a much-needed oasis.
They finally made it back home on Wednesday, March 27.
Now back home, and with time to reflect, this “third thing” as we’ve been calling it has created not as much introspection as one might think.
“I feel fine, I don’t feel like I have PTSD or anything,” said Holly. “I mean, I won’t be getting on any cruise ships ever but, I haven’t had an epiphany.
“I already knew what was important,” Holly continued. “I knew already, because we’ve all been through so much these last few years. Mom and I walked away and we can be resilient and we’re going to be fine and not curl into a ball in the corner. We’ll just get back to our lives, I think we’re resilient and get through these things. One of my worst fears is to drown in cold water and huge waves, and one of her worst fears is helicopters and heights, and we made it through both.”
“It’s clear to me that I have a lot to process, because the more information we got after the fact, the worse it was,” said Vicki. “So, there was no consolation that way, ‘oh we weren’t in that bad of danger,’ well, we were in worse danger than we knew. I’m pretty phlegmatic but as soon as I saw your Dad I burst into tears and I never do that. I feel more sensitive, I’m not settled yet.
“It isn’t that I fear death, as much as how much I love all of you and the thought to leave you is so hard. And then of all the ridiculous ways to go, not a cruise ship, it’s not something I was ever afraid of. But, if there’s anything we’ve learned in these last years its don’t take anything for granted.
“I think the other thing I’ve been so struck by is both sides of a perfect storm,” Vicki continued. “Everything that could go wrong did, to put us in danger, but then everything that had to go right to save us, did as well.”
Sidebar:
So what happened to the Viking Sky?
According to a March 27 statement from the Norwegian Maritime Authority, who is tasked with the official investigation into the cause of the accident, “For the present, our conclusion is that the engine failure was directly caused by low oil pressure. The level of lubricating oil in the tanks was within set limits, however relatively low, when the vessel started to cross Hustadvika (Hustadvika is a 10-nautical-mile long section of Norwegian coastline located in the shipping route between the towns of Molde and Kristiansund. Unlike most of the Norwegian coast, there are no larger islands sheltering waves).
“The tanks were provided with level alarms, however these had not been triggered. The heavy seas in Hustadvika probably caused movement in the tanks so large that the supply to the lubricating oil pumps stopped. This triggered an alarm indicating a low level of lubrication oil, which in turn shortly thereafter caused an automatic shutdown of the engines.
“The NMA has drawn up a general safety notice about ensuring a continuous supply of lubricating oil to engines and other critical systems in poor weather conditions. This should be done in cooperation with the engine supplier and, moreover, be included in the ship’s risk assessments in the safety management system.”
Viking Ocean Cruises, owners of the Viking Sky made the following statement following the NMA’s findings. “We welcome the prompt and efficient investigation carried out by the NMA and we fully understand and acknowledge their findings. We have inspected the levels on all our sister ships and are now revising our procedures to ensure that this issue could not be repeated. We will continue to work with our partners and the regulatory bodies in supporting them with the ongoing investigations.”
