I wondered about the status of the cruise ship industry. We're starting to imagine the post-pandemic society and in my imagination, cruise vacations are equivalent to the black plague. But that might not be the case for others.
The princess.com website says nothing about COVID-19 - it has lots of deals for Mother's Day and recommendations for vacations. If you click on the tiny strip at the top that says travel advisories, it said yesterday that it is extending the pause of global ship operations for the remaining 2020 summer season.
What's the status of cruise ships now? There's a Wikipedia entry for that. It says as of May 2nd, there were over 40 cruise ships with confirmed positive cases on board. One cruise ship remains at sea - the Artania, with 8 passengers scheduled to disembark at the end of May. There are 100,000 crew members on ships with many unable to be repatriated because cruise lines refuse to cover the cost.
Yesterday the Ruby Princess arrived in Manila Bay to let 5,000 Filipino crew members get tested before disembarking. There are 16 other cruise ships at anchor there. In all there are more than 17,000 Filippino workers on ships who have returned home - to quarantine. This is the ship that caused Australia's biggest cluster - a quarter of Australia's 97 deaths can be traced back to the Ruby Princess.
Cruise ships are still booking travel and people are still booking their vacations for next year. Supposedly that is because of generous cancelation policies. I haven't heard any CBC interviews on the cruise ship industry post-pandemic. CBC did look at air travel yesterday. It interviewed experts on what air travel will look like in the future. Expect long and complicated procedures in airports. Perhaps the Economist's pessimistic headline says it: Imagine the post-pandemic misery of business travel.
I was out photographing orchards yesterday and took this picture of this cute house in Grimsby. It is at the Lake where the Chautauqua community originated. The little lanes of colourfully painted houses are known as Grimsby Beach.
Isn't that a great photoshopped picture on the left? The perfect blue wave overcoming the luxury cruise ship on a seemingly sunny day. There is a 6 minute video of a cruise ship during a hurricane level storm. The one on the right seems more accurate - you can see everything sliding right then left then right HERE.
The Dailymail.com has an article on Norway launching an investigation into why a Viking Sky cruise ship set sail in a storm, and then lost power. Thirteen hundred passengers were airlifted to safety. That was in March 2019. There are previous events similar to this. There are lots of videos inside the ship. It is all HERE. Here is an email message supposedly sent during the crisis:
There's a 2013 article in the New York Times and it asks how normal are cruise mishaps. They show the website cruisejunkie.com where cruise mishaps and accidents are tracked. The site lists events such as passenger kicked off ship, collision, propulsion problems, insensitivity to medical emergency (passenger had heart attack and ship crew wouldn't allow them to get medical attention on an island, then he died on board). There are charts of illness outbreaks on cruise ships.
What about these dumbest cruise questions. It makes sense as over 20 million people take cruises each year.
1. Does the crew sleep on board? 2. Why are the ruins in such poor condition - after a tour of the ruins in Rome 3. What do you do with the ice carvings after they melt? 4. How small does your face have to be to get a mini facial at the spa? 5. What time does the Midnight buffet start? 6.This is our family's first cruise ever… we have several cabins on different decks of the ship and our question is, do all of the decks go to the same ports of call? 7. Are these islands completely surrounded by water?
There would be best sunset views on a cruise, so we'll go with that as our picture of the day.
