Royal Caribbean cruise ship expert reveals the biggest danger he constantly worries about
A cruise ship expert working for Royal Caribbean has revealed the biggest danger that leaves him constantly worried.
Founded in 1968, Royal Caribbean is one of the world's leading cruise lines working out of Miami, Florida, taking millions of people around the globe every year on a wide range of holiday offerings.
The company's flagship ship - Wonder of the Seas - can carry more than 7,000 passengers.
There's also Serenade of the Seas, which is used by Royal Caribbean's for its Ultimate World Cruise where it travels right around the world for nine months straight.
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Key to making all of these voyages an overwhelming success is the thousands of people employed to making the paying customer's holiday as perfect as it can be, from tidying their room and cooking the food in ship restaurants to helping with organising excursions and making cocktails.
There is also a tonne of vital work done that passengers will never see; the behind the scenes jobs that keep the ship well oiled in every sense.
That includes drill work in case of extreme events such as a fire.
Things are obviously a little different if such an event happened at sea, given you can't just walk away from it like you could on the high street. This is where safety drills are put in to action and staff become essential to controlling risks faced by you on board.
But such an event is not top of the list of worries when it comes to life on Royal Caribbean cruise ships.
No, that goes to another phenomenon that doesn't happen on board the ship at all. And it's 'unforeseen', which is terrifying.
The top spot goes to the storms that cannot be tracked.
"You're anticipating, where's the storm going to be? Where's my ship going to be? What am I going to do with my ship," according to Craig Seltzer, who has worked as Royal Caribbean's Chief Meteorologist for the last nine months.
Speaking to Mark Sudduth of Hurricane Track over on YouTube, Seltzer explained that there is real difficulty when it comes to tropical storms and hurricanes moving across multiple itineraries planned for the ship.
The ship has to physically avoid these if they can, which includes docking at ports not planned - a logistical nightmare for those trying to find space.
He said 'you want to get tropical storms from the beginning' with a big push on long term forecasting, which includes risk management of different outcomes.
On top of the two regular weather patterns monitored - which are port weather and voyage weather - there is the fear of unforeseen weather events.
The problem with this is the inability to properly monitor the weather from shore due to how far out in the ocean storms can be happening.
Micro-bursts of stormy weather form part of this phenomenon; something Seltzer himself experienced when he'd only been on the job for a month.
He'd checked in with one of the ship's captains and believing everything was fine with winds at 40 knots.
An hour later, the captain called him to say winds were now up to 65 knots. That's 46mph to 74mph, so quite a big difference and pretty bloody windy.
Seltzer said: "I'm like, what is happening? It's ahead of what the forecast was.
"It's not even near what the forecast was, and it's higher than what the forecast was."
Such events can cause big problems for a cruise ship, with the sudden change in gusts potentially blowing deck chairs around on the top decks.
Topics: Cruise Ship, Holiday, Travel, US News, Weather, World News
Tom Earnshaw