Cruise

To celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary, my wife, Anne, and I signed up for the “2020 World Cruise – Navigate the World,” Jan. 5-May 17, with Regent Seven Seas Cruises (844/473-4968, www.rssc.com). After we had sailed aboard the Seven Seas Mariner for most of January, February and into mid-March, however, the rest of our 4½-month cruise was canceled, as so many ports were closed due to COVID-19.

Cruise lines around the world are updating their health and safety practices in preparation for a return to cruising during the COVID-19 pandemic. Common updates include new hand sanitizer and mask policies, changes in how food is served and increases in onboard medical staff.

A list of the new health protocols of many ocean and river cruise companies, with links to each cruise line’s health practices webpage, can be found at www.cruisecritic.com/news/5369.

Subscribers, if, due to an emergency, you had to pack up and leave a ship on your own in the middle of a cruise to attend to your travel companion, what assistance did the ship's staff provide, and how did you arrange for that? 

Due to concerns about COVID-19, on May 14 Seychelles banned cruise ships from docking at the port in the capital city, Victoria, the only cruise port in the country, until at least 2022. At press time, Seychelles had recorded only 11 cases of COVID-19, with no deaths.

It was my privilege to sail on the final Holland America Line (HAL) cruise of the MS Prinsendam*, the “14-Day Norwegian Fjords Explorer,” June 17-July 1, 2019, round trip from Amsterdam.

I sailed with my nephew’s wife and her 20-year-old son. She and I had a Signature Class cabin, and her son had an interior cabin.

If you are an ITN subscriber whose scheduled tour, cruise or flight was postponed or canceled by the tour company, cruise line or airline because of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic...

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Dear Globetrotter:

I often read something in an issue of ITN, then cut it out and save it in a folder pertaining to that location. My New Zealand folder had collected several articles, and it came in handy when, on the spur of the moment in December 2019, I booked a 15-night cruise around New Zealand with Azamara Cruises (Miami, FL; 888/532-5828, www.azamara.com) for Feb. 23-March 9, 2020.

Aboard Oceania Cruises’ MS Insignia, which was docked in New York City, my husband, Michael, and I were halfway through a September 2019, 17-day Canada and New England cruise when he began to have trouble walking. His right leg was swollen, and he was running a fever.

The ship’s medical team summoned an ambulance, we were taken to a hospital in the city, and Michael was put under observation. I returned to the ship at around 2:30 a.m.