Powerless cruise ship nears San Diego harbor

[November 11, 2010]  SAN DIEGO (AP) -- The cruise vacation aboard a stricken ship is mercifully coming to an end, and an official aboard the boat said Thursday that both passengers and crew were coping well with the "obvious challenges."

Two tugboats were pulling the Carnival Splendor at a pace to reach San Diego Bay sometime around dawn Thursday, almost exactly four days after the giant ship lost power with nearly 4,500 passengers and crew aboard. Coast Guard cutters will then escort the ship around the tip of the Coronado Peninsula to San Diego's downtown harbor.

The Coast Guard said it will rendezvous before dawn with four more tugs about eight miles off the coast and then the six vessels will gently bring the ship into port.

"It will take a lot of effort to get a 952-foot safe and secure," said Petty Officer Rachel Polish, adding that weather conditions for the operation were favorable.

It is expected to take several hours for all passengers to get off the ship.

Cruise Director John Heald said that the people aboard "have risen to the obvious challenges and difficult conditions onboard."

Heald's comments -- posted in a blog on Carnival Lines website -- are some of the first from any of the passengers and crew to reach the mainland as cell phone links had been down until recent hours.

He said he's been making a lot of announcements from the bridge to keep everyone informed of the situation.

"Obviously it has been a challenge but let me tell you the most important facts and those are that the ship is safe, the guests are safe and that nobody was injured," he said.

Seth Grabel, 28, a Las Vegas magician, waited for his parents, who were on the cruise with hundreds of magicians participating in a convention put on by David Sandy Productions of St. Joseph, Mo.

"My dad is an amateur magician, but my mom hates magic. She was fighting this tooth and nail. She did not want to go on this thing. She had an intuition. I don't think my dad's going to live down this one," Grabel said.

Just about anything that requires electrical power was knocked out by a Monday morning fire in an engine room. There was no air conditioning, no hot food, no hot water, no casino. The swimming pool was off-limits because there was no way to pump chlorine.

Lines for cold food stretch for hours.

Toilets were working in most rooms, said Gerry Cahill, chief executive of Carnival Corp.'s Carnival Cruise Lines. The bar was open and offering free drinks. There were musical bands and children's games.

Intermittent cell phone service returned Wednesday, and Carnival made eight satellite phones available for passengers to make quick calls home.

The 952-foot Splendor left Long Beach on Sunday for a seven-day trip to the Mexican Riviera. The ship was 200 miles south of San Diego and about 44 miles off shore when the fire killed its power.

Cahill said the crankcase on one of six diesel generators "split," causing the fire. He said he doubted other ships in the Miami-based company's fleet were at risk.

"We've never had anything like this happen before, so I really don't think we have any risks to other ships," he said at a news conference Wednesday. "This is a very unusual situation."

No one was hurt, but the discomfort grew as the hours passed. The ship's auxiliary power allowed for working toilets and cold water but most other services were knocked out.

Gina Calzada, 43, of Henderson, Nev., said her diabetic sister, Vicky Alvarez, called her Wednesday on her cell phone and started sobbing. She said she has not been able to take her insulin for her diabetes because she is not eating enough.

She told Calzada all that she had eaten was some bread, cucumbers and lettuce.

"She said it stinks of rotten food and smoke," Calzada said. "It's dark, and it's cold.'"

Alvarez's husband said that when he went looking for food for his wife, a crew member told him to give her a Tic-Tac.

Carnival officials said they could not confirm Alvarez's report.

Navy helicopters flew in Spam, Pop Tarts and canned crab meat and other goods for the passengers and crew, said passenger David Zambrano, who phoned his employer, Denver TV station 9NEWS, from the ship.

"It's almost like a diet cruise because we've been eating salads and fruit and small sandwiches," Zambrano said.

Carnival first planned to haul the ship to the Mexican port of Ensenada, not far from a movie studio complex used to film "Titanic," and bus passengers to the U.S.

But the cruise line decided it would be better to go a little further to San Diego, sparing passengers the 50-mile bus ride to the border. San Diego also offers more transportation and hotel options.

"The conditions on the ship have been challenging and we are very, very sorry for the discomfort and the inconvenience that our guests have had to deal with in the past several days," Cahill said. "They signed up for a great cruise vacation and obviously that is not what they received."

In his comments Heald defended the ship and crew.

There will be those who will say this has been "`the cruise from hell,"' he wrote. But he continued that there are "many more who will tell you what they have been telling me and the crew and that is that Carnival as a company have done everything they can and continue to do so."

[Associated Press; By ELLIOT SPAGAT]

Associated Press writers Julie Watson in San Diego and Raquel Maria Dillon in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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