A Bordentown City college student was among those on board when a massive wave hit her ship in the Pacific Ocean last week.
By: Scott Morgan
BORDENTOWN CITY The weather was bad. It had been bad since the 18th when they left Vancouver. It stayed bad into the morning of the 26th. Then it got very ugly.
The MV Explorer chugged through choppy seas, sailing toward Korea, 665 college students en route to a semester at sea. Then, on the morning of Jan. 26, the Pacific Ocean swelled and slapped the 600-foot passenger boat with a 55-foot wave that knocked out three of the ship’s four engines and tossed the students and their cargo around like toys.
Jamie Slaper was one of those toys. A year after her older sister, Jennifer, returned from a sparkling semester at sea, the 19-year-old Farnsworth Avenue art student had survived a harrowing punch from a troubled Mother Nature.
Meanwhile, back on Farnsworth Avenue, Jamie’s parents, Jane Burns and Gerald Slaper, were sleeping. They’d been following the reports of the ship’s condition, and the passengers’ state of mind, online. Semester at Sea, which sponsors the Explorer’s floating semester throughout the Pacific Rim, regularly posts status reports, and when Ms. Burns went to bed on Jan. 25, all was fairly quiet.
The following day, of course, was anything but. Neighbors were the first to hear the news on TV, said Ms. Burns. Word had come from the Pacific that the Explorer had been badly damaged by an enormous wave, one month to the day since Southeast Asia suffered the brunt of a devastating tsunami.
Obviously, the toll of the Explorer’s wave was far less according to several reports, the only injuries this time were some broken bones sustained by crew members. But the event was decidedly scary, according to Ms. Burns, who said Jamie finally got a cell phone call through to her at 5 p.m. that day.
"Lots of kids got really, really scared," said Ms. Burns, relaying the information her daughter had told her. Waiting in the halls of a crippled ship, crawling toward Hawaii and out of contact with the outside world, Ms. Burns said, proved unsettling at best for the students looking forward to their tour.
"Of course we were worried," Ms Burns said. "We were trying to convince ourselves that (everything) was fine."
By 8:30 p.m., the Semester At Sea program reported that the U.S. Coast Guard had sent air cover to monitor the ship as it hobbled toward Hawaii. The online report filed that evening stated, "We would like to emphasize that the Explorer remains seaworthy and is safely proceeding toward calmer waters."
As it turns out, Jamie Slaper, on board through the University of Pittsburgh, was tossed about with her shipmates and their books, their beds, the various other things both nailed down and not nailed down but none the worse for wear, Ms. Burns said. Jamie is OK, she said, and is excited to finish her semester abroad.
But she won’t get to see everything she was hoping to see.
"We’re not going to Korea or Japan and they will have to fly us to China and possibly the next two ports after that," wrote Jamie in a Tuesday e-mail.
By Jan. 29, Semester At Sea reported that classes had gotten back to normal, while the Explorer had restored two of its engines. The ship finally docked in Hawaii on Monday. The ship’s condition and the course of the floating semester are currently being evaluated.
Back at the parents’ house in Bordentown City (and the grandparents’ house in the township), there is a quite sense of relief. But everyone’s aware of the fact that Jamie’s story of study at sea is a bit more exciting than Jennifer’s.
"She’s been around, she’s traveled," Ms. Burns said of Jamie. "But this was her first trip like this."

