The much-maligned cruise ship that was damaged in rough waters earlier this year appears to be sailing near some of the stormiest sections of Hermine Sunday evening.
Several vacationers posted videos and photos to social media showing rolling seas and steely gray skies from aboard the Anthem of the Seas on Sunday afternoon.
"Ready to get away from Hermine #seasick #stuck in cabin," Louise Hardag tweeted.
The Bermuda-bound cruise ship left Bayonne, New Jersey, on Friday and was reported a few hundred miles off the East Coast Sunday night, southeast of Cape Cod, according to ship tracking site Cruisemapper. At least one other cruise ship was also in the area.
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Robert McHugh of Point Pleasant, New Jersey, posted a video of pounding waves on social media. He's traveling with dozens of family members for a wedding in Bermuda. He said a majority of his relatives were getting motion sickness.
"The seas were churning up a little bit," McHugh said in a Skype interview. "There were a lot of people who weren't feeling well."
The motion of unsettled sea was rough enough that passengers had to hold onto handrails as they navigated the ship.
"When you're walking down the hallway, the ship is lifting up and dropping down," McHugh said.
Royal Carribbean, which owns and operates the ship, said in a statement that the boat is safely sailing to Bermuda in winds of about 40 mph — the minimum wind speed threshold for a tropical storm — and was more than 140 miles from the center of the storm.
"Earlier today, our captain informed guests that we had experienced higher winds and gusts for a 2-3 hour period," the cruise liner said. "We'll continue to share weather information with our guests throughout their trip."
In an unfortunate twist of fate, passengers Deena Abbate and Steve Matyasovsky were onboard the same ship in February when it encountered a raging tempest. They received a refund and a credit towards their next trip, which happened to be this weekend's cruise during Hermine.
"I guess it is pretty funny that here we are again," Abbate said.
"We booked this a long time ago, and who knew," Matyasovsky said.
While Hermine was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm after it made landfall in Florida, forecasters expected it to strengthen as it went out to sea Sunday night, and it could turn back into a hurricane.
Sunday's storm appears to be the latest in a string of incidents involving the ship this year.
In June, an 8-year-old boy drowned while in one of the Anthem's pools, and in February, it sailed into another Atlantic storm that tossed passengers and furniture about the vessel. Passengers described that voyage as "a cruise from hell."
Photo Credit: Provided by @Robert_J_McHugh
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