For the past three days, the giant cruise ship Carnival Splendor — with a small city of nearly 4,500 passengers and crewmembers aboard — has been without power 55 miles off the coast of Punta San Jacinto, disabled by an engine fire that has made the ship the focus of a military relief effort and worldwide attention.

The Coast Guard said early Thursday that the stricken cruise ship is on course to rendezvous with several more tug boats off the coast of California.

Petty officer Rachel Polish told the Associated Press the ship is being pulled by tugs and should reach the meeting site about eight miles off San Diego around 5:30 a.m. PT.

At that point a total of six tugs will begin towing the nearly 1,000-foot-long Carnival Splendor into port, an operation that will take approximately two hours.

As tugboats sent to rescue the 952-foot, Long Beach, Calif.-based vessel pulled it closer to shore and within cellphone range Wednesday, some of the 3,299 passengers aboard began calling family, friends and news outlets with firsthand accounts of increasingly miserable — and smelly — days without basic services such as hot food, air conditioning and, for a time, working toilets.

“It’s nothing like anyone expected,” said passenger David Zambrano, a technical operations employee of Denver’s KUSA-TV, in a report filed to the station. “You stand in line for two hours just to get your food because everybody goes to the same place to pick up their food. Then once you get your food, you look for something to do. People are playing cards. People are standing around, just kind of talking. They’re getting to socialize.”

Instead of dining on lavish seafood buffets, passengers have been fed Spam, canned crabmeat and Pop-Tarts, which are being ferried to them by U.S. Navy Seahawk helicopters from the USS Ronald Reagan, an aircraft carrier that reached the ship after being diverted from training off Baja California.

Two Detroit-area women, Angela Evans and Natalie Martinez, said the ship still has no electricity, no air conditioning and no hot water, and their windowless inside cabin is pitch black, according to Greg Alexander, Evans’ boyfriend, who finally talked with her on a crackling cellphone connection Wednesday afternoon.

“They’re fine but worn out emotionally,” he told the Detroit Free Press. “The first couple days were a nightmare.”

Cruise Director John Heald says the thousands of guests on the ship “have risen to the obvious challenges and difficult conditions onboard.” His comments were posted in a blog on Carnival’s website.

He says he’s been making a lot of announcements from the bridge to keep everyone informed of the situation.

Because of the lack of power, ship-to-shore phone service, cellphone and Internet service on the ship went down after the fire early Monday, leaving passengers unable to communicate with loved ones back on land. Carnival says it got limited phone service restored Wednesday, and allowed passengers to make outbound calls home on ship phones at no charge.

Phone service, cellphone and Internet service on cruise ships are done via satellites.

Until Wednesday, passengers also were unable to use their cellphones to call home because the ship was too far from shore-based cell towers. When the Carnival Splendor got closer to land, some passengers began receiving intermittent cell signals.

She says weather conditions are favorable for the operation, but the tugs will have to take special care because of the massive size of the ship and because it’s completely without power.

As the Splendor is slowly pulled back to shore, there are many questions concerning what caused the fire and how it disabled the entire ship. And cruise industry analysts already are debating whether the stranding of one of the industry’s newest, most modern vessels will have a long-term impact on what has been one of the fastest-growing segments of the travel business.

(Read More: USA Today)