Valiant Lady incident today

[gumshoe958]

Sounds like there’s been a very sad incident today involving a passenger overboard.

 

I’m due to sail on the 3-nighter to Zeebrugge tomorrow but just received an email saying it’s delayed until Saturday morning.

 

it says Valiant Lady won’t return to Portsmouth until at least 6pm tomorrow, about 12 hours late, after she “responded to an emergency situation which resulted in a search & rescue mission”.

 

They’re offering us $200 per person OBC plus £300 off a future sailing.

[Quacks the Cruiser]

According to the news, a passenger deliberately went overboard in the early hours of the morning and the ship and coastguard conducted a search and rescue before giving up causing the ship to be 12 hours late into Portsmouth.

 

On a 3 day cruise, to lose 1 day is not good and whilst onboard credit is nice, you have less time to spend it. I suspect the shops will be busy with "sailors" buying stuff rather than losing it.

 

Sorry for your disruption - not much Virgin could do. With the mess that Imagine Cruising (the charterers of this ship) have made of organising things, the cruise seems not to have gone too well. March has NOT been a good month for Virgin Cruises!

 

Don

[gumshoe958]

The latest update is they’re aiming for a 1pm departure tomorrow with boarding starting at 7am. On Monday sailors can stay on board until 2pm (presumably not a problem for the next sailing as that’s the Bachelorette charter).

[Amyracecar]

1 hour ago, Quacks the Cruiser said:

According to the news, a passenger deliberately went overboard in the early hours of the morning and the ship and coastguard conducted a search and rescue before giving up causing the ship to be 12 hours late into Portsmouth.

 

On a 3 day cruise, to lose 1 day is not good and whilst onboard credit is nice, you have less time to spend it. I suspect the shops will be busy with "sailors" buying stuff rather than losing it.

 

Sorry for your disruption - not much Virgin could do. With the mess that Imagine Cruising (the charterers of this ship) have made of organising things, the cruise seems not to have gone too well. March has NOT been a good month for Virgin Cruises!

 

Don

 

Talking of "sailors", I must say I thought it was a bit weird that the press release were still referring to this passenger as a 'sailor'. They did it twice, clarifying the first time that sailor meant a guest.

Erm... Virgin, this is not the time to be flogging your onboard branding. Just call them a person, or something simple (like passenger, guest etc) that the general public can understand. If you need to add a caveat to explain your language then you're placing the importance of that above the actual incident, which is a bit insensitive under the circumstances.

 

I'm all for doing things your way and call your customers what you like, but they should treat them with dignity in these exceptional circumstances.  

[Flowers62]

We’ve had to cancel and I have requested a full refund.
We live around a 5 hour drive away from Portsmouth and our new boarding time was 8:30am tomorrow, instead of 3pm today.  We looked at hotels in Portsmouth for tonight but it was all becoming a bit ridiculous for what would end up essentially being a 48 hour, 2 night cruise.

In the scheme of things, it’s a minor inconvenience for us but my goodness what an absolute tragedy for the family of the person concerned 😢