On a cruise aboard Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas I had a very strange experience. An experience that still has me wondering today.
I discovered deck 5 the day before my cruise was ending. Deck 5 had a jogging track that ran completely around the entire ship from forward to aft. I found the aft, or back of deck 5 to be only 15 feet or so above the churning waters created by ships propulsion. Although somewhat noisy, I found it to be relaxing. There where a few chairs for sitting. It was a great place to get away from the 6,400 passengers on the ship. I must have spent 45-minute relaxing and taking pictures of the beautiful Atlantic waters.
Sitting there looking over the expansive sea I wondered what the strangest thing any crew or passenger may have witnessed while cruising. Glowing sea creatures, a shark, UFO. Never in my mind would I have thought that I may witness something so bizarre myself.
As I was sitting in a wooden chair marveling the beautiful waters, I caught something out of the corner of my eye. It was to my left the starboard side of the ship. It was a round life raft. I immediately stood up removed the lens cap from camera and started to snap some pictures. I zoomed in as far as I could.
Looking through the view finder of my camera I didn’t notice if there were any people aboard the life raft. I would guess the raft was about 50-75 yards from the ship. I took as many pictures as I could.
The raft disappeared as fast as it appeared. I watched and wondered why a life raft would be floating in the sea so far from any land. I couldn’t get it out of my mind is their people on that raft?
I assumed the ship had to have seen the raft since it was so close to the ship and it appeared to be a rather large raft.
The ship never slowed down or made any course change to intercept the raft. We continued full steam towards Miami.
After a few more minutes I decided to find my friends and tell them the bizarre thing I just encountered.
As I was walking towards the entrance of the ship I overheard a couple standing on the starboard side of the ship talking about the raft. I stopped and said can you believe what we saw. I mentioned that I couldn’t tell if there were any people on the raft. They both said there was absolutely people on the raft. They also explained they called someone from the ship and told them what they saw. The only thing the ship said is that they would contact the coastguard. I thought this to be a strange response. Isn’t there some maritime law or something that would require some sort of rescue attempt?
After I got home I downloaded the pictures from my camera to my computer. The first pictures I really wanted to take a closer look at were the pictures of the raft. After blowing the frame up I could see people sitting around the life raft. To make this whole ordeal even stranger it didn’t appear that any of the people on board the raft was making attempt to contact the ship.
This encounter happened on February 11th 2023, at 5:00 PM. At the time I didn’t know our exact position when I saw the life raft. Once I got back to my cabin I turned on the map showing the ships location. It appeared we were just north of Nassau Bahamas. I do not have any other details about this encounter. I just hope a pray they made it to a safe location and that all onboard are alive and healthy.
