Man Who Fell Off Cruise Ship And Spent 20 Hours At Sea Details Ordeal

There is no shortage of horror stories concerning the many things that can go wrong when you decide to spend some time on a cruise ship. There’s only so much you can do to avoid the wrath of the ocean, and while you obviously want to exercise some caution while trying to take full advantage of an all-you-can-drink package, it can come back to bite you in a big way.

The chances of falling off of a cruise ship may be fairly slim, but despite the precautions in place, around 25 people still manage to end up going overboard on an annual basis. That includes one woman who spent 10 hours at sea before being rescued in 2018, and if you think that sounds harrowing, just wait until you hear about what another passenger had to endure following a 20-hour saga that thankfully came to a happy end last week.

The cruisegoer in question was James Michael Grimes, who had planned to celebrate his Thanksgiving on a Carnival cruise in the Gulf of Mexico. However, he spent the bulk of the holiday treading water there after falling off of the ship the previous night before being rescued by members of the Coast Guard who estimated he was less than a minute away from drowning when they swooped in to save him.

Now, we have some insight into what transpired courtesy of the man himself, as Grimes sat down with Good Morning America to recount the ordeal in an interview that aired on Friday.

Grimes admitted to having a few drinks in the day leading up to his fateful evening (including the free round he got after being crowned the champion of an air guitar contest he won shortly before going overboard) but says he wasn’t particularly inebriated despite not being able to remember exactly how he managed to fall off of the boat.

There’s a good chance that could have something to do with the impact of hitting the water, as he said his first real memory was waking up to discover he was floating in the sea and realizing there was no ship in sight. Fatigue was his biggest threat, but he also recalled a brief encounter with an unknown animal, saying:

“I thought it was a shark. I mean, I was swimming in one direction and I looked around and I seen it out the corner of my eye and it came up on me really quick and I went under and I could see it.

And it wasn’t a shark, I don’t believe, but it had more like a flat mouth. And it came up and bumped one of my legs and I kicked it with the other leg. It scared me, not knowing what it was or at the time, how big it was. All I could see was a fin.”

Grimes said the experience wasn’t enough to dissuade him from going on another cruise—although his plan to stay at least 10 feet away from the railings if he does is probably a pretty solid idea.