A few years ago I had a dream it was so vivid.
I dreamt that I was on a cruise ship that was leaning right over on its side. I was sitting on it and my husband was with me and I was frantic and told him to use his phone to get help as we were sinking.
There was a big black hole in the side of the ship that I presumed we had climbed out of.
I woke up and told my husband about it and then we decided to put the TV on to watch the news as we normally did most mornings.
The first image that appeared was a cruise ship leaning over and in trouble.
We could not believe out eyes.
It was the Italian ship Costa Concordia that had run onto a sandbank
That was 13 January 2012, which was actually a Friday!!!
I have had many cruises and experienced three near misses myself.
The first was on the Canberra on the last day of the cruise a fire broke out and it was under my cabin.
I wondered why my floor was hot!
No sprinklers were on board.
However the fire was put out in the engine room and we ended up on the BBC news!!
The ship was retired the following year when all engines failed at sea and tugs had to bring her back to port.
The second one was when I was on a brand new Princess ship called The Royal.
We were in the middle of a talk about what a state of the art the ship was and the fuel etc., when everything when black and quiet.
The engines had failed we were 85 miles from Naples however they managed to limp slowly back to port every time they put a spurt on, everything including lights stopped and went out.
They gave us all our money back even though we had had 10 days of the cruise!
The third experience was the worst and scary.
Again Princess Cruises this time The Regal a brand new ship.
We arrived at Santorini in the Greek Islands and anchored off in the bay when we were hit by a Hurricane.
The ship start to tip over and the Captain could not get the thrusters (if that’s the word) out to steady the ship.
Chairs started falling off balconies into the sea.
They struggled to get life- boats off in the horrific wind.
We were told later the wind was 92.2 miles an hour.
The Captain said after in all his 19 years he had never known anything like it.
Water was pouring several inches deep from the toilets and as the ship tipped bottles and glasses fell off the bar.
Staff were frantically rushing about.
We thought that our end had come.
Huge swirling waves were in the sea and it was very dark, even though it had been swelteringly hot an hour before.
The Captain pulled out of the bay into the sea and as we came out of the bay the ship started to go upright.
We waited till the evening this was around 2 am till the storm finished then went back to the two thousand passengers and five hundred staff stranded at the port of Santorini and picked them up.
Strange but true.
