One of the big benefits of being on this side of the world at this particular point in time is that my ship is not even remotely touched by the far-reaching effects of Hurricane Sandy. The storm that is pummeling the east coast of the USA and Canada is not even a blip on the radar this far away. That said, some of the rest of the ships in the fleet aren’t so lucky.
Alasse and Hunt are in the middle of their transatlantic crossing, and my heart goes out to them as I hear about the massive headwinds and slow progress the fringes of the storm are causing. Much as I’m simply glad I’m not on that ship, I wish I could just teleport everyone here where they would be safe and dry.
Granted, they’d also have to suffer through being massively overheated (we’re still in Indonesia), but they’d at least be free of massively high seas.
In other news, that’s more directly related to the flagship – we’ve cancelled our upcoming call in Port Morseby, New Guinea. We’ll be overnighting in Brisbane on the 8th of November and we’ll have four straight days at sea after we leave Darwin, Australia. This isn’t a call that the captain made easily, nor did he make it by himself. It was done under advisement from head office. Port Moresby simply isn’t safe, I mean they’re attacking people with machetes in the street there! You’re not even safe walking around during the day! This does not seem to be a port of call we would wish to make contact with. Brisbane is much safer.
Of course, no one really cares for change, and there have been at least two complaints to the front desk that I know of regarding the fact that we aren’t stopping in New Guiana. I will never quite understand people! I mean it’s not as if we just cancelled a call for fun! We cancelled a call because it’s blatentely dangerous! Would they prefer it if we set them loose in a place like that and let them fend for themselves! I hardly think so…
But you simply can’t please everyone.