CRUISE DRAMA FINALLY OVER

Staff Reporter THE cruise ship Grand Voyager was safely docked in the Cagliari (Sardinia) port yesterday morning after being struck 60 miles from Minorca by the severe storms that swept the Mediterranean. Several of the passengers had to be taken to hospital and an Iberojet charter flight safely took the first cruise passengers back to Madrid yesterday afternoon. The cruise liner docked in Cagliari at 10am yesterday and was met by Italian and Spanish emergency services. Three flights were chartered by Iberojet to bring the Spanish passengers, many of them from Majorca, back home, one to return to Madrid and two to Barcelona. The first passengers from the cruise ship finally arrived at the Madrid airport at 4.48pm yesterday in one of the first specially organised Iberojet charter flights. The remaining passengers had to wait for the second flight that would take them back to Barcelona avoiding the waves and the gale force winds. The cruise ship, with 418 passengers and 314 crew onboard, was crippled after severe winds and waves crashed through the bridge, damaging the electronics and shutting down all four engines. A total of five Spanish passengers had to be taken to the Cagliari Hospital, due to the injuries they sustained from the storm whilst on the cruise ship. An elderly lady had a nasty fall whilst she was being knocked about by the waves and twice fractured her leg. Four other passengers had bruises and knocks from hefty falls on the storm-hit cruise ship. The five were immediately attended by Italian and Spanish emergency services at the port and were then transferred to hospital. The emergency teams also allowed pregnant passengers to leave the ship, whilst the remaining had to wait onboard for the medical teams to give them a thorough check over. Nearly twenty passengers had severe bruising and all were suffering from fatigue after a rough and sleepless night. The ship was also badly damaged in the storm. Insurance assessors were allowed onboard to investigate the damage and many passengers said that they had seen much damage, for example broken furniture and instruments.