Special to the Town Crier
The travel brochure told about an adventure with ocean liner elegance and a visit to the natural beauty of Caribbean ports. The excitement of a "Fun Ship" experience led Los Altos resident Megan Wuth and seven other women from California Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo to take a cruise to explore coral reefs and walk on powder-soft beaches. Their Caribbean adventure came quicker than anticipated.
Her ship, named Monarch of the Seas, was operated by the Royal Caribbean ship line. It departed San Juan Dec. 13. Two days later, at 1:30 a.m., the Monarch slammed into a reef a mile off Philipsburg, St. Maarten, opening a 120-by-3-foot gash in the forward left side of the hull. The Monarch's draft - the depth of water the ship needs to float - is 25 feet, while the shallowest part of the reef is only 10 feet underwater.
"It was very much like an earthquake lasting about 10 seconds," Wuth said. "We weren't sinking like the Titanic, but I ran into the hall to see if there was any water coming in, and the ship's address system told us to put on our life jacket and go to our muster station."
The crew decided to beach the 74,000-ton ship on sand to prevent it from sinking, and the 2,557 passengers were safely evacuated. Wuth, and her friends from Cal Poly, were housed in an ocean-front hotel and later flown to Miami and home to Los Altos.
Earlier that morning, at 6:40 a.m., Megan called her mother from St. Maarten. "If my parents found out about the ship, I knew they would be worried big time, so I called."
She was right.
"Listening to the radio on his way to work, my husband Mick heard a ship went aground in the Caribbean.
"I started to worry whether it was her ship. When my daughter called and said she was fine I felt better. You just don't know about those things," Megan's mother Susan said.
Megan, a Los Altos resident and Mountain View High School graduate, had to leave her clothes on board the ship, but received most of her belongings back a week later.
She also got her money back and a free cruise for the inconvenience.
"Four of us are going on another cruise during our spring break," Megan said, to the western Caribbean, this time.
"I'll graduate with a bachelor of science (degree) in business in June, then I'll look for work in San Jose and eventually go for my MBA."
The Miami Herald reported no decision has been made about how to refloat the 880-foot-long ship and where to repair it.