Chaney Kwak - The Passenger: How a Travel Writer Learned to Love Cruises & Other Lies from a Sinking Ship

Published in 2021 by

Godine, Publisher

Boston, Massachusetts

Copyright 2021 by Chaney Kwak

all rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For more information, please visit www.godine.com

The author is grateful to the editors of the following magazines, where portions of this book appeared in slightly different forms: Hemispheres, StoryQuarterly.

library of congress cataloging-in-publication data

Names: Kwak, Chaney, 1979 - author.

Title: The passenger : how a travel writer learned to love cruises & other lies from a sinking ship / Chaney Kwak.

Description: Boston : Godine, 2021 .

Identifiers: LCCN 2020054421 (print) | LCCN 2020054422 (ebook)

ISBN 9781567926972 (hardback)

ISBN 9781567926989 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Viking Sky (Ship) | ShipwrecksNorway. | Kwak, Chaney, 1979 Travel.

Classification: LCC G.V K 93 2021 (print) | LCC G.V (ebook) | DDC 910.9163/24 dc

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/ 2020054421

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/ 2020054422

For my parents, survivors

This book recounts my firsthand experience as a passenger aboard the Viking Sky when the ship suffered a complete engine failure on March 23, 2019, and began drifting toward the shore. Sections written in the third-person point of view are based on video footage as well as interviews I conducted with rescue workers, who read the transcripts of their interviews and suggested corrections as necessary. All sources used in the writing of this booksuch as interviews, video footage, investigative reports, and newspaper articlesare listed at the end of the book. Although the names of public figures are accurate, in order to protect the privacy of the members of crew, I have altered their names. There are no composite characters.

1:58 p.m.

A s the cruise ship almost tips over, the horizon that once bisected my lovely balcony door rises like a theater curtain and disappears. Now the sea is the stage. I tumble off my bed onto the floor and roll like a stuntman.

For now the ship has yet to fully flop, though it feels like were getting pretty close. Lucky us, the modern ocean liner is an engineering marvel equipped with technologies ensuring that it always stays upright. Weve been rolling dangerously during a nasty storm but recover and list upright after each pounding wave threatens to capsize us.

Peoples screams pierce my cabin walls, louder at times than the clang of broken kitchen equipment above. Water glasses fling themselves against my cabin door as if possessed.

Code Echo! Code Echo! Code Echo! a mans voice crackles over the PA system.

Then, after a loud bang, all is quiet. The heating vent sighs one last time and stops hissing. The television screen goes blank.

The ship leans, as if in slo-mo. It should snap back and right itself.

I wait. And wait.

But we keep falling.

Earlier in the morning

B efore panic united us, boredom did.

We had been sailing up and down the coast of Norway for more than a week, alternating between placid fjords and the open sea. Each day, the ship dropped anchor at a new port and unleashed all passengers onto snow-packed streets and into shops brimming with handknit sweaters. We rode in sleighs pulled by steaming reindeers, squinted our eyes at 7,000 -year-old rock carvings, and bathed in sunlight filtered through the stained glass of a titanium cathedral. And we witnessed the northern lightsthe reason many of us came on this cruise.

Once accustomed to the dopamine hit that a new locale brings each day, your brain begins to take the novelty for granted. You develop a sudden aversion to the mundane. I did, anyway. Yesterday, the captain blamed high winds and rough waves for the cancellation of a scheduled port-call at Bod, just above the Arctic Circle. Today was yet another stormy day without docking, which meant we were left to amuse ourselves on this floating, -cabin complex. We were bored to death.

The cruises entertainment listing had no shortage of optionsor alliterations, for that matter. Would I enjoy the calming classical compositions brought to life by the resident cellist? Or immerse myself in the existential angst of Munch Moments, a digital art exhibit memorializing the magic of this master, Edvard Munch?

To be honest, as I read that entertainment brochure, I was a little jealous of whoever wrote it. I was on the cruise to write a feature for a travel magazine, and though that may sound enviable, I was pretty certain the brochure writer had been paid a lot more than I would earn for my article. Ive grown jaded beyond repair after a decade of carouselling in the freelance trade. It no longer thrilled me to see my name in publications Id revered. I was constantly chasing assignments, then running after the editors all over again to get paid. I used to put up with all that hassle for the sheer joy of seeing the world. These days, assignments felt less like travel and more like procrastination before Id start my real grown-up life.

Desperate for stimulation, I turned up for the morning quiz hour at the Explorers Lounge, the ships glass-ensconced living room at the bow on Deck . I sank into a chaise with a slice of Success Cake, which, Google told me, is a Norwegian specialty of almond meringue and egg cream. Teaming up with a group of snow-haired passengers who were three, maybe four decades older, I tried to answer questions about minor Henry VIII wives and milestone World War battles. Since Viking Ocean Cruises advertises heavily on PBS, it attracts a certain demographic, the type of people who actually want to geek out on Baroque palaces and the Marshall Plan in their free time. Without Google, I was an empty vessel. Needless to say, I got my ass handed to me. So much for that Success Cake.

Earlier that morning, the dark sea and bruise-colored clouds had sandwiched a sliver of blue sky. By the time the quiz finished, the blue ribbon had disappeared and near-horizontal rain lashed at us. The ship pitched violently, rising and bouncing as we penetrated deeper into the storm. Still, from all the way up here on Deck , hundreds of feet above the sea, even the largest waves seemed like ripples in a bathtub.

Wait till my grandkids see this, said one of my quiz teammates, thrusting her phone at me to film her against the window.

We were about to enter Hustadvika, the eleven-mile stretch of coastlineshorter than the length of Manhattanbetween the towns of Kristiansand and Molde. Intricate fjords burst into a confetti of rocks here, but unlike other parts of the Norwegian coast, there are no islands to slow down the waves. The untamed North Atlantic douses the shallow reefs hard and makes this well-traveled shipping channel tricky to navigate. Shipwrecks lie underwater, such as that of a -year-old Dutch merchant vessel once loaded with yellow bricks. Even experienced fishermen run aground here. The Admiralty Sailing Directionsthe authoritative, seventy-five-volume navigation reference for merchant marinerswarns seafarers of this notoriously dangerous region, especially when strong winds from SW to NW raise a large steep swell with hollow breaking seas... like today. Hustadvika is no place to be when a storm is brewing.