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The cruise ship Brilliance of the Seas rescued 11 people adrift in the Gulf of Mexico between Cuba and Mexico on Wednesday, according to VACAYA, an LGBT+ vacation company that chartered the ship.<\/p>\n
The Royal Caribbean cruise line ship departed New Orleans on Saturday for a seven-night cruise. On Wednesday, the captain spotted a boat in the distance \u201cthat appeared to be in distress,\u201d said Randle Roper, the CEO of VACAYA, who was onboard the ship.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe captain calls me immediately as the charterer of the ship to let me know that they are going to turn around and investigate, and that\u2019s exactly what they did,\u201d Roper recounted later in a recorded interview shared with CNN Travel. \u201cThey sent a pilot boat with Brilliance of the Seas crew members out to the stranded vessel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Roper said the 11 people were refugees, but he didn\u2019t know where they were from.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can only imagine the fear that they must have been feeling to be out in the open Gulf with no other vessels around,\u201d Roper said.<\/p>\n
When the refugees spotted the ship, Roper said that \u201cthey started waving that white flag of distress\u201d and that passengers on the chartered cruises went to the decks to witness the rescue.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had determined from a distance that there were 10 or more people \u2026 on the boat. They could also see that they were clearly in distress,\u201d Roper said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe refugees on the boat were literally bailing out the water out of the boat, so their boat had clearly become stricken, and they were just adrift sea and taking on water.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said they later learned that they were out there between one and two days.<\/p>\n
Among the passengers who saw the rescue unfold was former MTV host Julie Brown, who was performing on the ship. She was recorded on video witnessing and commenting on the rescue, noting that people were ferried three at the time from the failing boat and that the ones remaining were brought life jackets.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs they were coming toward the boat, I waved at them and they all waved back to me, so they\u2019re obviously in good spirits as well,\u201d Brown said in the video.<\/p>\n