After all the publicity regarding the Viking Sky off the coast of Norway and the impact on the passengers, it appears that it is not widely recognized what happened to us on the Viking Star in early October of 2016. Our captain, and I am sure Viking, went directly in a significant storm when sailing from Iceland to Greenland in the North Atlantic. According to the captain, who I spoke with directly after we had come through this ordeal, the seas were as high as 45 feet and the winds were gusting to 90 mph. The captain said that they had to strap him into his chair since he had fallen off the chair and hit his head. Why would he not turn around and weather the storm in Reykjavik harbor is beyond me?

Everything that was not secured fell or was smashed. It started when we were in the dining room and our table kept moving into a table closest to a wall. A door in the dining room blasted open and had to be held closed by a person from the crew until it could be jammed closed with a piece of wood. An entire tray of desserts in the kitchen fell over as did a large wine rack. In our room a pitcher and glasses were swept of a table and our sliding door closet doors hit the frame so hard they cracked the wooden frame. I was on the deck with the buffet later in the evening and could barely stand as I was thrown around. Stacks of dishes smashed on the floor. Talking to other passengers the next day, one woman said that she was bounced out of bed with her mattress and I heard that someone had a broken leg.

Apparently this disaster was kept quiet and never reached the notoriety that the Viking Star has reached. In addition to this harrowing event the clock system was not working for two days waking people up two hours earlier than requested among other little issues. We were in the last group to be tendered to a major Viking site in Canada when the captain aborted the tender operation. He later apologized and said that we could have safely been tendered to shore and back. Read more