Small Cruise Ship Grounded in Virginia Swamp

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The Spirit of Nantucket’s captain learned that his vessel was taking on water rapidly, so he did the smart thing for a ship’s captain. He ran it aground. The small cruise ship, which tours the intracoastal waterway for about 3 Grand per passenger, was likely trying to navigate some of the canals near the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia Beach when they ran into trouble. The Coast Guard is assisting.

From Fox News here:

A captain ran a small cruise ship with 66 people aboard aground in an isolated stretch of the Intracoastal Waterway early Thursday after it began taking on water. The captain wanted to keep the 207-foot ship from sinking.

Two 41-foot Coast Guard boats were transporting the ship’s passengers and crew to a ferry landing about 2 miles away from the rural area off Virginia Beach.

The cruise ship was lodged in mud about 9 feet below the water’s surface. The ship was only about 100 feet from shore, but the surrounding area is a wooded swamp.

The Coast Guard received a report about the ship at about 6 a.m. It wasn’t clear why the ship began taking on water. The boat, The Spirit of Nantucket, was on a 10-day cruise from Alexandria, Va., to Charleston, S.C.

I have made that same trip down the ICW before in my brother’s boat, a craft just over 50 feet. And it wasn’t the easiest trip. The canals are unevenly dredged and quite shallow at unexpected places. The waterway is full of debris such as submerged logs, especially after some of the stormy weather Virginia experienced in the past week. My guess is that the ship hit an underwater object like a submerged log that was jammed into the soft mud so it sticks up like a spear. Such items are famous for tearing hulls apart.

And besides that, who wants to go on a cruise down the ICW for 3 Thousand Bucks? Its a boring trip, and the only scenery is swampland as far as the eyes can see. Here is a Google map of my guess as to the vicinity where the ship grounded itself.