Jayme Lamm, who was one of the bachelorette party attendees interviewed in the Netflix documentary “Poop Cruise,” was days away from interviewing Michael Jordan for GQ when her life took a surreal turn aboard the Carnival Triumph.
Lamm, a freelance sportswriter at the time, was one of the more than 4,000 passengers stranded at sea in 2013 when an engine fire knocked out power on the cruise ship, leading to days without working toilets, air conditioning or reliable food. The ordeal became national news and earned the vessel a notorious nickname: the “Poop Cruise.”
She detailed how she missed out on her interview with Jordan in a recent post on Instagram.
“I was a sports writer at the time and I got the opportunity of a lifetime,” Lamm said. “It was to cover a Michael Jordan story in Houston for GQ magazine. I have been wanting to write for GQ magazine since I was like 15 years old. I finally get the opportunity, I go on this cruise ship and lose all cell service and all power and I ghosted not only GQ magazine, I ghosted Michael Jordan’s agent. I never got that opportunity back. I emailed and I called as soon as I had service and they never answered me. I wasn’t important. I was just a freelance writer.”
The chaotic trip marked a turning point. After returning to land, Lamm walked away from sports journalism, left Houston, and moved to Hawaii to start over.
“This changed my life,” Lamm said. “Less than a month later, I decided to pack up my stuff and moved to Hawaii, I wrote a book and I kind off lived off the grid. I slowly became a better person. I know who I was that cruise ship and I was bitter. I was angry. I was partying… I just wasn’t a good person. I don’t know that I’d be here today if I hadn’t gone on that cruise ship and experienced that level of sadness and loneliness and made a life change.”
Before she left sports journalism, however, Lamm told The Sporting Tribune that Miami Heat owner and the former CEO of Carnival, Mickey Arison invited her and a friend to the NBA All-Star Game in Houston, which took place less than a week after the “Poop Cruise.”
“Mickey Arison reach out to me afterwards and invited me and a friend to the NBA All-Star Game because I was taking the high road with the news coverage,” Lamm told The Sporting Tribune. “I am a lifelong Miami Heat fan and at the time news outlets were just going in on Mickey because he was courtside at a bunch of games while the cruise ship was just sitting there. And I just took the stance at the time and still do that what was he actually going to do for us?”
Jayme Lamm for The Sporting Tribune
Jayme Lamm with Miami Heat president Pat Riley and Miami Heat owner Mickey Arison at the NBA All-Star Game.
Lamm now runs her own digital marketing agency, with operations in both Denver and Houston. Though she left behind her sports writer career, she’s found satisfaction building something of her own. Lamm’s story, shared more than a decade after the infamous cruise, has gone viral once again—this time not for sewage-soaked headlines, but for how an unexpected detour at sea led to a completely new course on land.
