Finally, I am in a position to give a proper update!
Now mind, I’m not sure if all of you will consider this a positive update (I’m a little nervous about it myself) but it is information. So…here goes.
As soon as the day after tomorrow, Amras and I will be switching not just ships. But lines. You see, the line we work for is one of many under the same main umbrella. In normal times the sister lines don’t actually interact all that much; but these are not normal times.
It has been quite a struggle to try and get us all home. There are after all, quite a few of us. Seemingly barred from commercial flight (at least in the US) and unable to dock anywhere on the USA East Coast, the mother-line (for lack of a better word), has decided to pool our resources. They are pooling nationalities; all the Asian crew to three of our ships (including the one I am currently on) and from there onwards to Indonesia and the Philippines. All the Europeans to another ship. And us North Americans? Yup, yet another ship. The ship chosen for us is from one of our sister lines, and it’s bigger than ours, much much bigger. I’m rather afraid of going for a couple of reasons – one we are not employees of the sister line, so the second we land on her decks we are essentially refugees. Our contacts with head office will – to the best of my knowledge – no longer exist. We just stay on that ship for as long as they tell us to until they can drop us off somewhere to fly home. Also, as soon as we land on the other ship we will be in 14 day mandatory isolation.
So, there you have it, there is a plan, there is definitely forward motion. But it will be at least two and a half more weeks before we see home.
But since we’re going to be moving, Amras and I spent a good part of this afternoon packing up the cabin that has been home for the past little while. There’s still a little bit left to go into the suitcases, but not too much. A lot of my books sadly will go back to the paperback exchange, and we may be pruning our wardrobe a bit (after all, transfer between ships is by tender so every little bit counts).
We have no idea where we’re going to be housed when we reach the new vessel but at least we’re going from a clean ship to a clean ship, and we will continue to be safe and looked after.
That said, I am also sad about this. They’re splitting us all up for very good reason, and it’s a good plan. But they’re still splitting us all up none the less. This team, this 592 person team. I may not know all of them, I don’t know three quarters of them nearly as well as I would like. But I still don’t want to leave any of these people behind. I had hoped that when we left we would all debark together, all in the same place, all to the same airport. Now we just have to say goodbye to each other here and hope that we all make it to the right places eventually.
But it is a plan. And it does mean that we will hopefully be home soon.
Not soon enough, but soon.