A South Florida couple who embarked on a seven day Mediterranean cruise will return home to South Florida with nightmarish details.
Connie Barron and her fiancé, Jay Garcia, were asleep in their cabin Friday aboard the Costa Concordia cruise ship when things suddenly went wrong.
"She felt the impact, the electricity went off," said Arlene Sanchez, Connie's daughter. "The boat tilted so dramatically that her room was a chaos."
Connie quickly grabbed her life vest and a cell phone to call her daughter in Weston to tell her the bad news.
"What I got was, 'Please listen to me-- listen to me quickly. There's an accident, the boat is sinking and they're trying to get us on a lifeboat. I'll call you when I can,'" said Sanchez.
The phone call didn't last long, but Sanchez would later find out that her mother and her mother's fiancé would make it off the ship safely.
Only half of the lifeboats were usable because the ship listed heavily to one side. The captain was nowhere in sight. Cooks and entertainment staff struggled to figure out how to operate the lifeboats and evacuate the 4,200 people who were onboard the sinking ship.
"She felt there was no control of the situation", said Sanchez.
The ship was slowly sinking because it slammed into a rock or reef that left a gaping hole in the vessel's hull.
"They started gathering them on the 5th level, 5th floor and that floor started filling up with water," said Sanchez.
As Barron and Garcia sailed away on lifeboats, they saw the jaw-dropping sight of the ship on its side submerged in water.
The couple stayed in a church near Rome for the first night for shelter before the cruise operator put them up in a hotel.
The couple is expected to arrive back in South Florida Monday afternoon, much to the delight of nervous family members who promise the next vacation won't be as far away.
"Maybe Hollywood Beach, not on a cruise ship-- that's for sure," added Sanchez.