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You had a lot worse duty then I did. Sounds like we had the same cooks though. 30 years this month and I still have yet to want to eat rice again in anything. You could not pay me to take a cruise with 5000 people again unless it was Navy service and I'm physically beyond that now. Been there done that almost four years but glad I did it though.

If I wanted to travel by ship I'd book a place on a freighter instead and enjoy the solitude. These people were lucky in the fact if passenger so and so got on their nerves during the problems they could go back to their stateroom and be left alone.

The passengers were not as miserable in that time frame as the Engineers and deck crew likely were trying to get the ship back to port safely without further serious problems. No ventilation down in The Hole would be very rough times. It was a lot hotter than 60 something degrees the passangers could go to.

Despite the media hype they were safe where they were till they could get the ship towed in to port and San Diego given the problems in Mexico was a very wise choice too. Had they tried to off load the people at sea there a good chance some passengers would have gotten seriously hurt. Had the off loaded pier side in northern Mexico? Same thing on the trip back by land. Peoples vacation plans get altered or even ended every day by airlines. I'd rather have been a passanger on that ship three days than sitting in a plane on a tarmac for up to 12 hours.

Things would go from bad to worse when our Army infantry battalion — 4th/47th/9th ID — would embark for combat ops. They never understood the limitation of the ship's evaporators when it came to fresh water. They LOVED Hollywood showers. When they came aboard it was mandatory water hours. We did have a partial cure for the doggies that came back in covered with mud to their arm pits — they got totally and thoroughly hosed down with the fire hoses before they were allowed aboard. The wash down was conducted on the Ammi pontoon moored to our starboard side.

The problem with cruise ship passengers is they think it's like a land hotel. Wrong. These people are extremely lucky the engine room fire didn't get out of control. Fire is the most dangerous thing that can happen aboard ship. The passengers were lucky that the fire was contained and the damage wasn't worse.

The smartest thing was not to offload the passengers in Mexico. The safety of all these Gringo touristas could not have been guaranteed, even if transport north was in place. Stay on the ship, folks, you're inconvenienced but alive. Offload at sea, under the most benign of weather is fraught with dangers. The best decision was towing to San Diego.