A small cruise ship in Southeast Alaska made an unexpected detour on Monday night, Aug. 3, to help a 21-foot skiff that ran out of fuel between Petersburg and Juneau.
Michael Love, a software developer from New York City, was a passenger aboard the ship and described the event on social media.
What got his attention the most wasn’t the rescue itself — it was when the captain announced that the yacht of billionaire Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg was closer and hadn’t answered the radio call for help.
“There was near unanimous booing when the captain announced this,” Love said in a post on the social media network Bluesky.
The Zuckerberg yacht, Launchpad, did not hear the initial call for help because it was operating on a different radio channel, according to a company spokesperson.
The spokesperson said Zuckerberg and his family were not aboard the vessel at the time.
Vessel tracking services in the area show that the $300 million, 387-foot yacht slowed to a halt outside Farragut Bay as the 192-foot, 86-pasenger UnCruise Adventures ship Wilderness Legacy steamed around and past the Launchpad, stopped at the skiff and then towed it into sheltered Farragut Bay.
Through a Bluesky message, Love said it was nice to be on a boat that was engaging with its surroundings in a positive way.
“Frankly, if I was Mark Zuckerberg I would be absolutely ecstatic at a chance to do something helpful for someone in need and maybe get some good PR out of it,” he said.
According to the U.S. Coast Guard and the Marine Exchange of Alaska, which monitors ship traffic in Alaska, there was no distress call — just a general request for assistance.
Coast Guard Public Affairs Specialist Shannon Shepard said by email that the Coast Guard heard the call for help just after 9:30 p.m. Monday night.
“At approximately 9:56 p.m., the Coast Guard determined they were not in distress and issued a marine assistance request broadcast on their behalf,” she said.
John Hollingsworth is the chief operations officer of the Juneau-based Marine Exchange, which repeated the broadcast.
“We did assist the Coast Guard with callouts on our radio and (were) able to hail the Wilderness Legacy, who ended up rendering assistance,” he said.
“I do know that Wilderness Legacy is an UnCruise vessel and is very familiar with Alaska waters, so that may have contributed to them rendering assistance quickly.”
The Launchpad has been in Southeast Alaska for much of the summer, including the Wrangell area on July 5.
The Wilderness Legacy’s detour is the second incidence of aid rendered by a small cruise ship in Southeast Alaska within two weeks. On July 30, the National Geographic Quest assisted a family who had to swim to shore in Glacier Bay National Park after a humpback whale sank their sailboat.
Dan Blanchard, who owns UnCruise, said he wasn’t initially aware of the Wilderness Legacy’s detour because “this kind of aid is such a common thing that it does not always rise to my attention.”
Sarah Scoltock, a spokeswoman for UnCruise, said the Wilderness Legacy was able to refuel the skiff after towing it into a sheltered area.
“The next day the (Wilderness Legacy’s) captain, Sean Manske, contacted them and received word they made it safely to Petersburg,” she said by email.
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