Cruise ship nearly crashes into waterfront home
Bill and Yasmine Todhunter saw the cruise ship, Equinox, come very close to their $2.3 million waterfront home in Florida.
Bill ran near the water to wave desperately at the oncoming ship in the hope to derail its path. He has said that the ship stopped 100 feet from his waterfront patio.
Bill said to WPLG-10, “When the cruise ship thrusters stopped, there was silence and I yelled "somebody is going to get fired" and everybody on the cruise started applauding.”
The ship was taking passengers on board on a ten night Caribbean cruise. Equinox is usually docked on the Port Everglades dock but due a fuel spill, it was docked at Terminal 25. This means that the ship had to turn east in front of Todhunter residence.
Yasmine began to film the event and as she filmed said, “It’s too close!”
The couple are bewildered that they experienced such a close call like that. “We've been here for six years. We've never seen anything like that. We've never seen anything that close,” Bill said.
Equinox carries 2, 850 passengers and the 1,041-foot-long ship weighs 122,000 tons.
Royal Caribbean Cruises who own Celebrity which is the company who uses Equinox, denied that the ship had touched bottom.
"The ship operated safely and did not put guests or crew at risk. We can also confirm the ship did not touch bottom," Royal Caribbean Cruises said.
Bill finds that statement unlikely and said, "So you know that there's 25 feet of ship below the waterline, and so it's obviously touching bottom.”
A Port Everglades Pilots spokeswoman said, “'Due to the strong winds and current at the time, the cruise ship in question came closer than usual to the side of the channel, as shown in the video.”
“As stated by the cruise line, the vessel did not touch bottom. The use of bow thrusters in the channel disturbs the water and routinely churns up silt and mud, as shown in the video.”
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