How safe is your cruise ship?

The terrifying moments on board the Louis Majesty, a cruise ship hit by 26-foot waves off northeast Spain, may be prompting second thoughts among travelers considering a vacation at sea. Two passengers were killed and 14 people were injured when water violently crashed through the windows of some of the ship's public areas this week. The incident brought to mind scenes from "The Poseidon Adventure," a movie in which a wall of water completely flips a cruise ship. But could that actually happen away from a Hollywood movie screen? And how well are cruise ships equipped for extreme weather? Experts said waves like those that struck the Louis Majesty are extremely rare and should be of little concern to the average cruise ship passenger. "Cruise lines are operating on a weekly basis, they're always at sea and there's a very, very, very low frequency of these incidents happening," said Cmdr. Buddy Reams, the chief of the Coast Guard's Cruise Ship National Center of Expertise. "We have a really rigorous safety protocol that we go through for each of the cruise ships that operate [in the U.S.] and it's primarily because they're carrying so many passengers." Several industry insiders weighed in on common questions travelers may be asking about the safety of cruising after this week's incident. How likely would it be for a cruise ship to encounter a wave that might tip it over? Not very likely. In fact, Richard Burke, professor and chairman of engineering at the Maritime College of the State University of New York, said he would be as worried about it as an asteroid hitting the Earth. "Encountering a storm at sea and having the ship moving around and possibly getting seasick, those things happen. But we're talking about waves of extraordinary magnitude that are very, very rare," Burke said. The chances of a "Poseidon Adventure" disaster happening on a modern ship are virtually nonexistent, said Harry Bolton, captain of the training ship "Golden Bear" at the California Maritime Academy. The only way that it could happen is if the ship were in extreme weather and positioned sideways to a 70- to 100-foot wave that would have the potential of rolling it over, Bolton said. "I guarantee you're never going to be in those kinds of waves anyway," he said. "[Cruise ships] avoid bad weather like the plague. They don't want the passengers in peril, they don't want to risk any injury or accidents." How far can a cruise ship lean over to one side and still recover?