"At the moment, I was really scared; I sort of broke down a little bit, emotionally," Gerald said. "My mom is the type of person who'll put others before her so I didn't know what happened, and if she just stayed on the ship to sacrifice for the other people."
The Lynches were watching a magic show on the ship when something went terribly wrong.
"They heard this huge loud boom; everyone told them it was an electrical problem," Gerald said.
Joanna's sister got a call too about the dream cruise ending abruptly and deadly, for some.
"There weren't enough life boats initially for everybody so they waited until the boats came back a second time," Melody Rainwater said.
While waiting, the self-sacrificing nature Joanna's known for came out, refusing a life jacket of her own.
"She was giving away life jackets to elderly and people who were in wheelchairs," Gerald said.
The Lynches had to wait for new passports in Rome. The family hopes to get on their regularly scheduled flight home to California Tuesday night.
