Day 15/71: Sunday March 15, 2020: At Sea

Got another letter this morning. Australia will close all its ports to cruise ships effective today. Many African ports as well as those of Spain, Portugal and France are also closing. Hence there is no continuation option for this cruise. Instead of docking in Brisbane tomorrow, we have been instructed to sail directly to Sydney, arriving on the 17th. The announcement by the Captain was completely clear, but it sounds like we will remain on board the ship until we can depart on the 20th to leave the country.

I sent an email to the Loan Pine Koala Sanctuary, in Brisbane, requesting they cancel the our reservations we made for tomorrow. It was going to be very nice!

Yesterday, we made reservations for all three of us at the Hot Rock Grill tonight and for the La Dame on the 18th.

Just before noon, the seas really started to get heavy. Tropical cyclone Gretel is catching up to us.

El Capitan made a PA announcement (in his barely intelligible broken French/English) this evening saying that the Port of Sydney is closed, but we (as well as others) have applied for an exception so that we can enter. He did not say when we might get a response.

Day 14/70: Saturday March 14, 2020: At Sea

We got the compensation offer today. They are offering three options:

• Terminate the cruise in Australia and get a refund prorated on the number of days sailed.
• Terminate the cruise in Australia and get a 125% voucher, prorated on the number of days sailed, for another cruise within the next 2 years
• Continue on with the alternative route around South Africa and receive a 15% voucher for a future cruise within the next two years based on the full fare paid for the world cruise.

The caveat regarding the option to continue the current cruise is that, while all the ports shown on the proposed itinerary have agreed to allow us to disembark, there are no guarantees those guarantees will be honored when we get to the ports. Ironically, the proposed itinerary consists of several days in French ports. As I was reading the itinerary, I was also listening to the French President giving a speech to his fellow countrymen urging them to stay at home and do not travel. Europe currently is the epicenter of the pandemic.

We were also told that no new passengers would be allowed to join the cruise and, while we will lose some crew members in Australia, no new crew members will join the cruise. However, they still plan to allow guests to disembark at those ports who will permit this, so there is still a danger of a guest bringing the contagion back on board.

They also said that there would be a minimum requirement of guest to warrant continuation, but they did not provide what that minimum number would be. 

If things were a bit more certain, I would probably opt to continue the cruise. However, the refund offer is acceptable (although it does not address the eight port landings we missed during the last two segments) and there will be other opportunities to visit these places without the overhanging drama of the cruise.

As it is, it's a simple answer. We have booked flights on Qatar Airwaysn (Flights QR909/QR7813), departing Sydney on March 20 and arriving in Houston on March 21. It is a 35 hour total travel time with a 3.5 hour stop over in Doha. We will do a two week self-quarantine when we reach Houston.

Maria and I had made reservations for another massage on the 17th but we moved it up to today. It was a 90 minute hot stone massage. Incredible!

Day 13/69: Friday, March 13, 2020: Port Vila, Vanuatu

Friday the 13th. Not a good day to make any major decisions. We docked at Port Vila, Vanuatu in the morning. We headed ashore for a lunch and stopped at a sushi restaurant. It was a good meal. I had an eel bowl and Maria had a sashimi bowl. We also had a couple of bottles of sake. We did enjoy the meal until the bill came and we discovered they did not accept credit cards. They were very nice however and offered to have the chef drive us into town to an ATM. We did so and Maria pulled out V$20,000 Vanuatu (worth about US$166). Why she opted to pull so much out, I don't know. The bill was for V$12,996 (US$108 which I thought was staggering). I gave the chef $13,000 and he told us he did not have the V$4 change (US$0.03). We assured him we did not need any change. We then asked him if he would take us back to the ship, which he did. I gave him V$1,000 (US$8.33) which he could not believe.

In the evening, we were presented with a letter that said the cruise was going to be canceled after we reached Perth. We were to be given an option to continue on an alternate route or go home. There were no other details given. Later in the evening, the Captain held a meeting in the Show Lounge. We thought he would provide additional details, especially concerning compensation offerings for the canceled cruise. But no, Instead, he informed us that there was a cyclone developing in the Coral Sea and the plan was to try to outrun it to Brisbane and take shelter there until it passed. There were a lot of questions concerning the cruise cancellation, which the staff could not answer except to say more information would be forthcoming.