Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Penfield Family Recalls Journey on Storm-Battered Cruise Ship

freeimages.com/Robert Linder

Members of a Penfield family are recalling their adventures at sea when their cruise ship was battered about by hurricane-force winds in the Atlantic over the weekend.

The Royal Caribbean's "Anthem of the Seas" is scheduled to dock in New Jersey tonight.

More than 4,500 passengers and 1,600 crew members left Saturday on a 7-day cruise to the Bahamas. But the ship sailed into a major winter storm with waves as high as 30 feet tossing the 1,141-foot vessel around.

Jack Best of Penfield and 7 members of his family are happy they were not injured. Best said the captain of the ship ordered passengers to their cabins for 17 hours at the height of the storm.

"As the ship tilted -- and it titled pretty badly -- items that were on our shelves rolled onto the floor. We put them back up and they would roll again. My wife, Kathy put some things in our drawers and we could hear the items roll back and forth. Doors and drawers opened. It was almost kind of ghostly."

Best views the aborted cruise as an adventure that will be a great story to tell -- and embellish -- over the years, but he said not all of the passengers see it that way.

"Some people have no concept of the challenge the ship had faced,” he said. “My daughter overheard one lady complaining that there was no fruit-flavored yogurt, and when the (staff member) told her the refrigerator downstairs had been compromised, she accused the crew of being lazy."

Royal Caribbean says four passengers reported minor injuries and the ship sustained some damage to its public areas and staterooms.

Passengers will get a full refund and a certificate toward 50 percent off a future cruise.

Beth Adams joined WXXI as host of Morning Edition in 2012 after a more than two-decade radio career. She was the longtime host of the WHAM Morning News in Rochester. Her career also took her from radio stations in Elmira, New York, to Miami, Florida.