Spirit of Alaska
Cruise Ship Grounds Off Alaska Coast
June 4, 2008
For about the past two weeks, it has been rather quiet at Cruise Bruise, with no new cases to report. This seems to have been an unusually safe period of time, 'perhaps' a sign that people are settling down and things are getting safer on the high seas.
The peaceful silence was broken today when the Spirit Of Alaska's rudder scrapped bottom off the coast of Alaska, prompting a United States Coast Guard (USCG) rescue team to investigate the incident.
All 63 people, 41 passengers and 22 crew members aboard the Spirit, are safe and the most recent reports say the vessel is not taking on water in Tracy Arm, a glacier laced fjord about 45 miles south of Juneau, Alaska.
The USCG says that the Spirit's captain reported the incident about 0800 hours Wednesday morning. A rescue helicopter from Sitka and the Coast Guard cutter Liberty responded to the call.
The vessel is awaiting divers to inspect the hull before it can continue on.
A spokesman for Cruise West, owners of Spirit Of Alaska, said Wednesday afternoon that the Spirit of Alaska was on the second day of a seven-day trip that was to start and end in Juneau.
Spokesman Al Patrone said the passengers on the Spirit of Alaska would transfer this morning to another Cruise West boat, the Spirit of Endeavor, and would resume their tour.
The Tracy Arm fjord is a section of Sawyer Glacier within Ford's Terror Wilderness, named by Congress in 1980. Ford's Terror Wilderness consists of 653,179 acres with two deep, narrow fjords, Tracy Arm and Endicott Arm. Both fjords are over 30 miles long and one-fifth of their area is covered in ice. At the end of Tracy Arm is Sawyer Glacier. The peaks rise to 7,000 feet.
The video below is from the Tracy Arm of the Sawyer Glacier, not from this particular incident though.
