All week long, people were talking about this video, so I was very curious to get to a good wireless connection in order to see it. No way to watch it on the ship!
The weather channel story is an amazing documentation, with footage shot on the ship. In addition to the "wreckage" footage of chairs and people sliding, there's footage from the bridge and the engine room that must have come mostly from the communications team aboard the ship. Knowing what I do about how flaky our internet is now (and it's better than it was then) and generally about how systems work on the ship, I'm very impressed by the reporting. None of the passengers even know where the engine room IS, and half couldn't find the bridge. That kind of access at such a critical time is quite extraordinary.
(One small note, the ship has 4 engines. The story reports that 2 were knocked out, and the implication is strong that those were all the ship has. But unless they've outfitted the ship was extra engines since that voyage, that's a bit of drama inserted into a story that really didn't need any.)
Both videos make me tear up a bit, for different reasons. The MV Explorer really feels like home to me.
Thanks, Captain Jeremy, for dodging as many storms as you did last week. I never felt in danger (never even felt seasick). But oh, Mother Nature, you do get angry at times.
Updated to add: I later learned that the Captain for this leg of the Spring, 2005 voyage was replaced in Honolulu by Captain Jeremy, who's been one of the captains since. (By contract, two captains each sail half the year. No vacation during the term of duty.) Just a couple weeks after the Pacific storm, there was a storm in the Mediterranean which tossed around the MV Explorer's sister ship, the Voyager. Coincidentally or not, Captain Jeremy was the captain brought in after each of those incidents.
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