Passengers relayed accounts of increasingly deplorable conditions aboard a disabled Carnival cruise ship, but the Coast Guard said on Tuesday that it would take two more days to tow the ship from the Gulf of Mexico to port in Mobile, Ala.

A fire on Sunday knocked out the vessel’s propulsion system, leaving it unable to sail and without power, sewage, heating or air-conditioning systems. The ship, the Triumph, is carrying 3,143 passengers and 1,086 crew members.

“It is just squalor and disgusting,” said Steven Peery of Sacramento, whose wife, Cindel Peña, was on the ship.

Ms. Peña, in conversations with both her husband and her mother, Serena Peña of Woodland, Calif., described a vacation turned nightmare. The lines for meals lasted more than an hour, she said, and the hallways and cabins were so hot and foul that people had taken to sleeping in whatever outdoor space they could find.