Carnival Vista creams dock will exiting port of Messina!
 

Jacket,
That did not look like a proper dock for a ship that size. What do you think happened? It was the port pilot, who should be great at that port. Thank God, no one was on the smaller boats as far as the news report. I hope that is true. Wonder if the ship continued on or was delayed.

I could not tell anything from this film clip about the dock the Vista was tied up to. You would hope it was big enough to accommodate such a huge ship and of course this seems like the 1st time this has happened.

Did those thrusters used to push away from the dock operate at too fast a speed to create that wave? I guess we will find out!

I assume it was the pilot but I don't know enough about this to say for sure though I imagine the buck has to stop with the captain.

Yes if there was no loss of life that's all that matters. The rest of it will be sorted out by the insurance cos. I suppose.

I also just have no idea if the ship had to stop to sort of fill out an accident report. I would imagine not as the video we saw should be enough and I'll bet there are others available too.

So any cruise plans?

No. Mike would cruise every trip, but I want to go somewhere this Fall to hang out in one place, do a little sightseeing and walking, but mostly evenings in plazas or streets lined with cafes and local activity. Maybe Crete, maybe Italy again, but some part we have not been. Wish we could do both, but we already did the cruise early last Spring with DD and GD to the Caribbean on Princess Regal. Since we treat them, including airfare and hotels before and after, it is a bigger bite out of our travel budget. We like seeing them have fun though, so not complaining. We are lucky, grateful and very happy we can do it.

This was GD's 3rd cruise and she is now a cruise addict. Mike and I took a short cruise last year for our anniversary, in addition to the one we took with them. We had to tell her it was a cruise only for grownups - true from our POV.

What do you have in the works?

We had a cruise on the Ovation planned for Nov. but RCI let some very rich guy charter the ship so that plan got changed in a hurry. Now its the Ovation out of Sydney in Dec. 2017.

We fly to upstate NY in Oct. to see my best man and his family whom we had not seen for over 20 yrs. until they came to Chi to attend our sons wedding last May.

Wow! Lots of choices for plazas and local activity. Madrid comes to mind as does probably many locales in South or Central America. Also Croatia, Berlin and Montenegro. A fb friend was just in Sicily BTW and posted tons of pics and from what I saw there is a lot to like in the way of what you are looking for. Consider Malta as well.

Have fun. Half of it is in the planning. :).

Cheers, Larry.

saw this on "that other website" :D.


My view was even better from the bridge overhang on the port side.

The description is slightly inaccurate. The ship wasn't fully sideways as theyve suggested. The stern was further away, but the stern was turning into the marina. It makes no sense why it even did this manoeuvre. When we arrived, the ship physically turned inside the port so that it was facing the correct way for departure. When it did depart, there is no reason why it just didn't go through the very wide channel between the marina and the monument at the port entrance.

All it had to do after pushing off was go straight through the huge gap aft first. I didnt get it at the time either.
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