It isn’t always plain sailing

This week Mother Nature really is causing the travel industry some problems with cruise liners taking the brunt of the storms at sea and on land. Yesterday my social media news feeds were full of stories and photos of tourists carrying suitcases above their heads on flooded Venetian streets as Venice becomes victim to Acqua Alta (which in Italian means High Tide) in the worst case of tidal flooding they have seen in over a decade. With 3/4 of the city reportedly under water its no surprise that travel has been hugely disrupted and that includes the cruise ships docking in Venice.

The high tides, heavy rain and gale force winds have been causing problems elsewhere in Italy for Celebrity Cruises. It has been reported that whilst docked in La Spezia the Constellation (or Connie as she is affectionately known by) broke her mooring lines and collided with the Costa Magica who was berthed behind her. The quick thinking Captain manoeuvred the vessel into the harbour basin and dropped anchor whilst the storm passed. Thankfully no one was injured and there was no significant damage to either ship. Phew.

The Navigator of the Seas has also been in trouble over the weekend after a technical problem saw one of her stabilisers becoming detached from the vessel leaving a hole in her hull. With huge amounts of water leaking in, Navigator had to miss some ports of call and dock in Vigo for emergency repairs leaving a lot of frustrated and upset clients on board, although by the sounds of things the situation could have been very serious.

More often than not cruising goes as planned without incident but there are times when things do crop up and when they do its usually down to extreme weather conditions or technical fault. Neither of which (especially the weather) is really anyone’s fault and all you can do in those situations is to try and remain calm and make the best of a bad job as my Gran would say.

Have you been away recently and had your plans hijacked by Mother Nature? Are you currently wading through Venice knee deep in water? Id love to hear all of your accounts and travel tales 🙂

 

 


About Me

Hi there, My name is Isabelle, I'm 31 years old and I live in a small village in a lovely part of rural Lincolnshire with my husband Carl who I married on the beautiful island of Rhodes in 2012, our daughter Lexi who is 6 and our son Oliver who is 3. Oh…

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