Cagliari

Oct 22nd
Cagliari, Sardinia (sort of)

Today was meant to be spent in Cagliari but the weather had other plans. From what I gather, pulling into the port this morning was nothing spectacular, some wind and storm clouds passing overhead. There was some sort of storm passing through the city but not one that seemed unusual or raised any sort of alarm and we began to dock as planned. At this time I was laying in bed, half awake, waiting for the boat drill announcement that was scheduled for today. Then I hear the code words indicating heavy winds at the gangway, something I thought was part of the drill, and went back to sleep to wait for the next set of code words which would mean I start my portion of the drill. Those words never came, instead, an announcement came on saying that all tours and shuttles have been cancelled, we snapped a line do to sudden high winds, and that we’ll be leaving the port. Now I’ve heard of skipping ports due to weather related issues, but hearing that we broke a line from high winds in Sardinia just didn’t seem quite right, but regardless, we were leaving. I got out of bed and headed upstairs to the mess to get some food and try to figure out what was going on and see what was so bad that we were leaving the port. Well, turns out we’d just been in a Tornado!!
Yeah, not kidding, just as we had docked and put down the gangways, a tornado formed on the pier and then rammed into the side of the ship. The tents set up on the pier had been blown out of sight, a tour bus had been spun around and flipped on it’s side breaking all its windows, some tanker had been blown across the pier, scrap metal broke partitions on the 9th and 10th decks, and the ship had literally been pushed off the pier by breaking through a line. Wow. Luckily no one had gotten off the ship yet or we’d have had a major problem on our hands, but believe me when I say this tornado came out of nowhere, totally unexpected. The ships security cameras were actually able to catch it on tape and they’ve been running the footage on the TV system all day. It clearly shows tents flying, the bus getting flipped, the tanker being thrown, and the ship getting pushed away, dropping our gangways into the water. It’s really quite unbelievable. In his 50+ years of experience, our captain had said he’s never seen anything like it.
To my knowledge, only one person was injured, and that was the bus driver who was in the bus when it got flipped. He’s supposedly in the hospital in stable condition, so hopefully he’ll make a full recovery. But again, thankfully this happened before any passengers were cleared to go ashore, had it happened 30 minutes later, we’d have had an entirely different situation.
However, due to this renegade tornado, Ron wasn’t able to get off the ship and to a hospital as planned, meaning he has to stay aboard till Athens. I really hope this doesn’t complicate things further for him.
The remainder of the day was simply a sea day. Last minute activities were planned, maintenance people were rushing to get things cleaned up on the sundeck where broken glass had claimed the pool, and the band got to sleep in as we prematurely sailed to Greece. Another reason I love this job! Hopefully the rest of the cruise will go smoothly, we’ll avoid random natural disasters, and I’ll fly home safe and sound to a city where I won’t wake up to the wicked witch flying around outside my window. Thanks