Mama’s Bahamas Drama

Monday Mantra

Oh pleeeease …. Oh pleeeease …. Oh pleeeease ….

Mama’s Bahamas Drama

When someone misses the ship, there’s always more to the story.

The first thing I did on Friday morning was switch on the TV news, but not to see what’s going on in the presidential race, who’s getting Prince’s estate, or which bathroom transgender people will be using in North Carolina. Instead, I was itchin’ to see whether there were any new developments in that high-drama story of the woman who missed her cruise ship’s departure while her children were on board.

If you’re reading Monday Mantra, I’m sure you were following the story just as closely as I was, and with each account you read, you became more and more infuriated … with the mainstream news media.

In the event you live under a rock and somehow missed the numerous video clips of the poor, distraught woman who wailed with heartache as Norwegian Breakaway, with her children aboard, pulled away from the Nassau dock, let me give you a brief overview.

The story was a nail-biter. A frantic husband, alarmed that his wife had not returned to the ship by departure time, leaps into a golf cart and begins a search for her. Next, we see the golf cart scurrying back at warp speed, both husband and wife aboard. A happy ending? Not quite. Simultaneous with the couple’s arrival at the pier, you hear the horn and see the ship on its way back to New York.

We now zoom in on the woman who leaps from the golf cart, falls to her knees, pleading with the ship to return for her, screaming that her kids are on board. Oddly, her husband is not seen comforting his hysterical wife but sort of skedaddles out of the frame leading me to think this might not have been the first time the little woman has screwed up vacation and he’s simply up to HERE with her.

In many news accounts, that’s where the story ends. And those who have never sailed once again think poorly of cruising. If you don’t fall off a ship or get norovirus, these reports suggest that the cold-hearted cruise lines will abduct your offspring and sail them off to New York City while stranding you in Nassau.

Buried deeply, almost as a footnote at the end of most accounts, however, the reader learns:

  1. The ship was held for 30 minutes — almost unheard of!
  2. The children were not alone, but with other family members on board.
  3. Norwegian Cruise Line provided lodging and assumed the cost of transporting the husband and wife back to New York — even though the woman was clearly at fault.

I hope we all learned something from this incident. What I learned is that you simply can’t believe everything you read.

 

— Judi Cuervo

 

Editor’s Note: Get more details on the complete story.


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Judi Cuervo is a New York City native who fell in love with cruising in 1976 during her first sailing aboard Carnival Cruises’ Mardi Gras. Twenty years later, she began her freelance cruise writing gig and, since that time, has covered mass market, ultra-premium, riverboat and expedition ships for regional, national and international publications as well as cruise websites.