This news item was posted a few days ago on Cruise Critic:
"AmaWaterways have yet to confirm the details surrounding an incident in which their river cruise boat AmaDagio was trapped in a lock with another ship (on the Rhone River in France), forcing the line to debark passengers and delay the scheduled itinerary…"
You've never really lived until you've been stuck in a lock in France.
The passengers on the AmaDagio had some options, and that's not always the case. Especially if there's only one passenger…and one crew member.
For us, it was on the Midi Canal in southern France. We manoeuvred our ship, all 27 feet of it, into 64 locks that week. In one of them, we were trapped.
The water was dropping, just like it was supposed to because all 64 of our locks were going downstream. The "ship" beside us started to list…inward…think of a boat tipping sideways into the middle of a confined space. Our "ship" was doing the same thing.
There was no evacuation plan. Passenger(s) were stuck, going down with the ship as it were. The scheduled itinerary was endangered, especially if the boats were broken.
Fortunately for both vessels, there was a man at the wheel of the lock, controlling the dispersement of the water. Yes, a locksmith. He closed the gate, stopped the flow of water, allowed more water to pour in from the top, and the two ships became horizontal again.
After a few minutes of impending terror, we kept to the itinerary in one piece. The one-piece was more important than the itinerary.
Carnival Splendor
8 nights
October 8, 2013
New York (return): Grand Turk, Half Moon Cay, Nassau
Inside: $369
Cost per day: $46
www.carnival.com