Jewel of the Seas was on its way to Saint Martin from San Juan on the first night of a week-long Caribbean cruise when Kendra Nagy woke up at 4 a.m., opened her balcony door and heard the men's cries for help.
She immediately called the ship's main desk who passed her concerns along to the captain. He took the reports seriously, turned the ship around, issued the alarm signal for a person overboard and searched the area with floodlights. After about an hour, they found a white spot in the ocean.
“When it finally hit on something that was clearly sticking out of the water a little bit, that was a rush,” her husband Roy told a local TV station. As the ship got closer, we saw the guy there waving. That's when we really got goose bumps.”
The three rescued men had been in the water for about 10 hours, after capsizing their speedboat en route to St Croix from St Thomas. Once onboard they received food, water and medical treatment, before being dropped off at St. Martin the next day.
"We are just glad that we were at the right place at the right time to help them," a statement from Royal Caribbean said.
The couple, who are from Massachusetts, became minor celebrities for the rest of the cruise, posing for photos with the rescued sailors and receiving praise and gifts from the captain, crew and fellow passengers.
--by Adam Coulter, U.K. Editor ~ Cruise Critic
I saw this on TV last night and thought it was pretty cool. Bood for them, for speaking up and insisting that they heard what they heard. The captain acted appropriately and three lives were saved. Good job all around.
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