Oslo (TAN): A cruise ship that was stranded off the Norway coast with over 1,300 people on board since Saturday, finally docked on Sunday at Molde harbour, media reports said.
A mayday call was sent out by the Viking Sky cruise shipcruise ship on Saturday afternoon after it experienced loss of power and was drifting towards land in bad weather.
While some passengers were airlifted to the land, the ship on Sunday docked with around 900 people on board, reports said.
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Representatives from the US, UK and Canadian embassies came to assist their citizens, news agency NRK said. Most of the ship’s passengers were US and UK citizens.
The Viking Sky was built in 2017.
“Our first priority was for the safety and wellbeing of our passengers and our crew, and in close cooperation with the Norwegian Coast Guard, the captain decided to evacuate all guests from the vessel by helicopter,” the cruise company Viking Ocean Cruises said in a statement.
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Rescue teams with helicopters airlifted the passengers and crew over several hours in the bad weather.
A source in Bergen in Norway’s west coast, from where the Viking Sky had started its journey north on this trip, said the coastline further up was not capable to handle a crisis such as this one.
“Rescue teams did amazing work. Their efforts deserve to be recognised. Luckily it ended well for most passengers (only a few were injured). It could easily have turned into a great disaster,” the source told TAN.
The next sailing of the ship to Scandinavia & the Kiel Canal, which was scheduled to start on March 27, stands cancelled.
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