A 19-year-old college student, on vacation with a group of friends, somehow fell off the world’s largest cruise ship off the Coast of Cuba last week and has not been found.
Sigmund Ropich is from Texas but he was attending college in Washington State. He fell off the Wonder of the Seas about 9 at night on the second day of a seven-day cruise from Port Canaveral in Florida. The ship measures 1,188 feet long and was carrying 5,606 passengers and 2,300 crew on its 18 decks.
Royal Caribbean International, which owns the ship, said, “The ship’s crew immediately launched a search-and-rescue operation.” A passenger made a voice recording of the captain’s announcement at the time, saying, “We have turned around and we are heading back to the position we had at that time. We will start the search-and-rescue operations with our rescue boat, with out spotlight, with our crew out and about to look and hear for anything.”
The search went on for about three hours and then the ship continued its cruise to Grand Cayman Island.
Since the liner was in Cuban waters at the time, the Cuban Border Guard took over the search-and-rescue effort at sea and on the land. The U.S. Coast Guard said it would investigate the incident when the ship returned to the U.S.
Meanwhile Ropich’s sister, Savannah, organized social media posts in an effort to continue the search for her brother. “I just want my brother home,” she wrote.
The Wonder of the Seas was launched in January, 2022. It weighs 236,857 gross tons and has a top speed of 22 knots.
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/02/us/florida-royal-caribbean-cruise-passenger-overboard/index.html
