Passengers aboard a cruise ship have been stuck in the Gulf of Mexico because a cruise liner could not make it back to port following Hurricane Nate.
The Carnival Fantasy is set to dock at 4pm Monday in Mobile, Alabama.
It was originally scheduled to return Saturday but couldn’t make it back because of the storm.
A Carnival cruise liner had to meander in the Gulf of Mexico for three days because the port it was supposed to dock at in Mobile, Alabama, on Saturday was closed from Hurricane Nate
Nate made landfall on Sunday, bringing flooding and power outages to the U.S. Gulf Coast
Nate quickly lost strength Sunday, with its winds diminishing to a tropical depression as it pushed northward into Alabama (pictured) and Georgia with heavy rain
Some passengers had complained about the unscheduled delay on social media.
Carnival spokeswoman Christine De La Huerta said the ship had plenty of provisions as it meandered in the Gulf while awaiting the reopening.
The ship has a total guest capacity of 2,056 people and carries a crew of 920. The ship departed Mobile on a five-night Caribbean trip on October 2.
Passengers who were supposed to depart on the next cruise on Saturday have also been complaining because their trips were shortened and they didn’t receive prompt communication from the cruise line.
Passengers who were supposed to depart on the next cruise on Saturday have also been complaining because their trips were shortened and they didn’t receive prompt communication from the cruise line
One passenger asked the cruise line to give the passengers their money back
Officials have to survey the ship channel and make sure navigational markers are in place after a storm. The Coast Guard says it has reopened the Port of Mobile with restrictions.
Ports remain closed in Pensacola, Florida, and the Mississippi cities of Gulfport and Pascagoula.
Nate made landfall on Sunday, bringing flooding and power outages to the U.S. Gulf Coast.
It then slogged its way across the U.S. East Coast on Monday, dumping heavy rains and bringing gusty winds to inland states as a tropical depression.
It then slogged its way across the U.S. East Coast on Monday, dumping heavy rains and bringing gusty winds to inland states as a tropical depression
One firefighter has been killed as a result of the tropical storm after he was hit by a car in North Carolina.
Nate spared the region the kind of catastrophic damage left by a series of hurricanes that hit the southern U.S. and Caribbean in recent weeks.
Nate – the first hurricane to make landfall in Mississippi since Katrina in 2005 – quickly lost strength Sunday, with its winds diminishing to a tropical depression as it pushed northward into Alabama and Georgia with heavy rain.
It was a Category 1 hurricane when it came ashore outside Biloxi early Sunday, its second landfall after initially hitting southeastern Louisiana on Saturday evening.
On Monday morning the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said that a depression in open Atlantic has strengthened to a tropical storm.
The center says Tropical Storm Ophelia is about 860 miles (1,385 kilometers) west-southwest of the Azores and poses no threat to land.