Is it normal to have a power outage on a cruise ship?

Question

I got off the Norwegian Spirit today, and a few nights ago we had a power outage and also the engines failed, so we were just drifting at sea for about 15 minutes. The crew (captain, cruise director, etc.) made it seem like no big deal, but my question is, is that common to have a power outage like that?

Answer 1

It is not a common occurrence, but it does happen on occasion.

If you had a power failure, one of the main generators probably went down. The engines would have been stopped on purpose. It is not safe to steam around the ocean without electrical power.

Everything on a ship works by electrical power, steering, radar, navigation etc: and initially the engineers would be trying to find the fault on the generator system. There is a backup generator that takes time to start. 15 minutes isn't that long. It doesn't seem to have been much of a problem.

Answer 2

I got off the Spirit today also, and I've been on numerous cruises and never have experienced that. I can't answer your question for sure, though I have a guess. The Spirit is already running on only 3 engines versus 4, and thoese 3 are strained. They're moving as fast as they possibly can and although Darin & Captain Hoyt didn't make a big deal out of it, it definitely was because we were in the middle of the ocean with no engines moving at all. My guess of the problem was the engines working to their full capacity and they're strained. I'm actually very surprised that they didn't possibly cancel or alter the cruise after us to fix us the engines a little bit, because after experiencing that, I definitely wouldn't want it to happen to someone else. It was a very scary thing to happen out of my 7 years in cruising.  I don't think that it is common because I've never experienced or even heard of something like that happening.

Other than that, wasn't the cruise fantastic? (:

Answer 3

I don't think that is normal to have that sort of "Power outage" like that. At least you are home and safe.

happy travels.

see cruisecritic.com for great reviews.

Answer 4

it is very unlikely these days to have those problems with modern electronics on ships, these ships are high tech  

Answer 5

The answer to your question is NO. I doubt that it was a drill either. I don't think that they would do that with passengers on board. They must of had some sort of major failure. And it took 15 Min's to get the power restored or for the back up power to kick in.

Hopefully this happened in calm seas. What if their was a major storm? you guys would of been tossed around like rag dolls.

Answer 6

No its not normal.  Remember that ships are machines and can fail but when they fail like that there could be big problems.

Hope all came out ok.

Answer 7

It is NOT COMMON at all!  I suspect the ship's personnel were simply behaving the way they did to avoid upsetting the passengers.  I've been on ships twice when we were literally in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean (two or more days from shore) when there was very rough water and thick fog, and they locked all doors to the outside decks as a safety measure.  During both times the officers and crew chiefs were out and about in the passenger areas quite a bit more than usual and thus much more visible, smiling, answering questions, etc.  The Captain was on the bridge the entire time -- there is a rule on that ship that anytime the fog horn sounds the Captain cannot leave the bridge at all.