January 6th - Another Evacuation

We had yet another medical evacuation from the ship last night.  This one was pretty terrifying but amazing work by the Canadian Coast Guard and the crew of the QM2.

At some point last night, the wind really picked up and the snow starting blowing.  We were clearly in the middle of a blizzard.  We checked the navigation channel and it showed that the ship had turned around and was heading back toward the east coast of Canada.  We wondered if perhaps it was to avoid the worst of the weather and that maybe the plan was to go around the west coast of Newfoundland.  We really didn’t know; no announcement had been made and I imagine most people didn’t even realize we had turned around.

The scene outside our room was amazing.  The snow was coming in all directions and we were moving at 24 knots, which is pretty speedy for a ship.

Around midnight the Captain came on the load speaker.  Now, here on the QM2 announcements are not broadcast into your stateroom unless it’s an emergency.  The midnight announcement was not broadcast into the rooms so I had to run out of bed and crack open the door to listen.  Needless to say, I wasn’t getting any sleep anyway.

The announcement was informing any passengers who were awake to NOT go outside (I don’t think anyone in the right mind would have anyway) and that we were positioning ourselves for a helicopter evacuation of a passenger…in the middle of a blizzard…in the middle of the night and with an 80-mph wind.  Oh, by the way no flash photography either.

Shortly thereafter the ship came to a stop and we started bobbing around a little.  The actual evacuation took place around 1AM.  I was awake but honestly didn’t hear the helicopter because the wind was so strong.  This whole operation took amazing courage on the part of the helicopter pilot and the QM2 staff who had to be out on deck.  Amazing stuff!

The Captain recapped the whole operation during todays noon announcement.  The location we actually met up with the helicopter, just north of Sydney Nova Scotia was actually the 2^nd place we had gone to rendezvous.  Initially the ship had gone 4 hours in the opposite direction closer to Newfoundland, but there was no place for the helicopter to refuel so they had to move closer to Nova Scotia.

They never give any information about the patient but I’m guessing it was someone traveling by themselves because the Captain mentioned a ship’s nurse had gone with them.

We are now headed east toward England.  It’s still lightly snowing and the seas are rough but the Captain says it should get better tomorrow.

On the way coming back to our cabin just now we heard the medical staff called to the beauty salon for a medical issue…hopefully not serious this time.