Steve and Cathy's Blog

As I am sure that anyone who reads this stuff will be grateful that we only have a few things to mention on the Sea Day.  The subjects will be breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Ha Ha.  Only kidding.  We have final overcome the urge to describe every morsel we eat, I promise.

The three subjects are: Pirate drill, sanitation procedure ramp up and change in itinerary.

Well, we find out today that we will enter another High Risk Area for Piracy.  Specifically, we are notified that “soon after leaving the port of Zanzibar (Tanzania) on February 21st, M/S Insignia will be passing through another High Risk Area (HRA) for Piracy … ”  Captain Majore Brajcic request that 1) “During hours of darkness, only essential open deck lights will be on as it is important to reduce the ship’s external lighting in certain areas.  With this in mind, we strongly recommend that you turn off your cabin lights when not required and draw close the curtains of your cabin window or balcony;” and 2) ” … I respectfully request your full participation in … ” “Guest and Crew drill at 10:15 on February 19th.”

Sanitation procedures have been ramped up.  There are CDC-recommended protocols that have been adopted by Oceania Cruises in order to minimize the spread of diseases.  We all have heard of the nightmares on board some cruise ships where hundreds of people come down with noro virus. (my spelling here may be off)  Well, the same goes for Acute Gastroenteritis (i.e., the trots, diarrhea, Montezuma’s Revenge, the Aztec two-step, etc).  The ship monitors how many passengers and crew report this to the doctor on board or to Reception.  At certain points determined by the number of people reporting (this is translated to a percentage of those on board), the crew establishes certain protocols, especially with regard to cleaning the ship and food service.  At this point, we begin to see slight changes, such as pepper and salt shakers being replaced by paper packets of those spices, no ketchup or mustard containers on tables in the Grill, no bowls of chips or nuts in the bars (someone told us this), an increased request by Cruise Director Leslie Jon to “please, please wash your hands often and use the hand sanitizer that is available all around the ship.”   It is called The Red Zone. This awareness has been particularly evident since Cape Town when 300 people came on board. Rumors were starting to circulate that at least six people had been quarantined.

Itinerary change: Around 5:00pm, the captain comes on the ship-wide public address system to announce that we will no longer be able to dock in Nosy Be, Madagascar.  Apparently the windstorm and strong currents experienced a couple of days ago had put the ship 80 miles behind its intended position.  During the night last night, they made up 20 of those miles, but it will be impossible to make up the rest.  As that would mean our stay in Nosy Be wouldn’t commence until late afternoon and would only be for an hour or two, Oceania regretfully is canceling its call there.  While Cathy and I were looking forward to our visit there, we wonder of the warning in the daily Currents from a day or so ago might mean we might have dodged a bullet.  Who knows. Therefore tomorrow will be another Sea Day, but it means that we will definitely be back on schedule for our arrival in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.

Cathy and I are transportation geeks, so we know that this can happen, and, while we are disappointed, we deal with it.  We had signed up for a tour around the mall island and a stop at a rest on a beach where we were hoping to swim in the Indian Ocean for the first time. There are also interesting flora and fauna here that aren’t anyplace else. Oh well. We go to dinner, have a fine time, return to our room, and continue our recuperation.  As we say in the biz, “Stuff Happens,” or words to that effect. 🙂