Celebrity Infinity crashes in Alaska

A couple of days ago, Celebrity Infinity was on an Alaskan itinerary.  When I  worked on board I worked for two seasons in Alaska and know most of the ports of call. Ketchican is a popular cruise port. I remember there being many totem poles around the town as there was a native American influence. The town is known for salmon and the spawning pools and streams which are there, and where there is salmon there are bears too.  The Alaskan weather is very changeable, one day it can be stormy with lumpy water and the next day you could be forgiven in thinking you were on a Caribbean sailing not an Alaskan waters.

However a few days ago the Infinity crashed into the dock in Ketchikan whilst attempting to dock.  The wind looked wild and look at the size of the ship pictured (Above is Celebrity Summit, sister to Infinity), a gust of wind needs to be a pretty big gust to move 91,000 tons of cruise liner.

I remember bad weather when I was on board in Alaska and it took the Captain or Navigator hours to dock.  The ships crew need to be sure that when docking the guests are safe.  But with some of the videos I have seen online it looks like the weather won the battle.  A sizable hole was gauged into the ships hull.  This was repaired to make the ship sail worthy however the dock at  Ketchikan will take months to repair. 

Fortunately when I worked on board I did not encounter any sailings where the ship was damaged.  The only memorable ‘damage’ story I had was as we were attempting to dock in Ushuia in Argentina the ship speared a dead carcass of a whale on the hull of the ship. This needed to be removed before the ship sailed in the evening.