Once Covid 19 had its first high profile victims - the Diamond Princess quarantined in Japan in full view of the press and the Ruby Princess that inadvertently brought Covid to Melbourne - the general press seems determined to look for problems within the industry - fuelled by blanket bans on cruise ships in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Spain and the UK. However as cruising restarted it instantly faltered - Hurtigruten had a serious Covid outbreak, on their expedition ship MS Roald Amundsen, where the pre cruise quarantine of staff was mismanaged - after just a few days their first cruise was cut short with 21 guests and 41 crew members out of 158 have testing positive for COVID-19.

The general press rubbed its hands together as cruising struggled - people on cruises are ‘crammed together like sardines’ - infections are ‘rampant and spread like wildfire’ - though of us who love to cruise know that this just isn’t true and at the next few ‘distorters’ were obviously just inaccurate test results. An Alaskan cruise with UnCruise, and a Norwegian cruise on SeaDream I,both ground to a halt with the same scenario - a false positive test resulting in cancellation, quarantines and subsequent negative results on a retesting. the future of cruising is definitely going to require quicker and more accurate testing.

So after a disappointing summer, where Cruising seems to have been made the scapegoat for the COVID 19 woes of the entire travel industry, the hopes of Cruising in Europe are now resting on the large independent Italian company MSC Cruises.

MSC Grandiosa has left Genoa tonight for a seven night cruise including three ports in Italy and another in the Maltese port of Valletta. Only residents of Schengen countries have been allowed on board, which excludes travellers from the UK and Ireland, and the ship is sailing about 70% full with an estimated 2500 passengers on board. The crew have been quarantined ahead of the cruise and a round of testing for cruisers before boarding, combined with compulsory daily temperature checks for all are part of the measures in place to reduce risk. People arrived in small groups fro boarding which included health questionnaires and pre cruise testing. The Muster Drill - where everyone onboard came together to learn about emergency lifeboat drills has now nbeen replaced with a compulsory online ‘muster’ in your cabin, buffets are now served not ‘help yourself’ and - in a move that concerns portExplore - the only way to go ashore is in an organised group through MSC excursions. Whilst we understand the reasons for this we are really hoping that this is short-lived and that other companies don’t follow on - we absolutely defend the right of every cruiser to go ashore and explore under their own steam!

However for now we just want to wish MSC and everyone aboard a healthy and completely uneventful cruise in the hope that we will all be able to get back onboard soon.

#wewillcruiseagain and #wewillbe back are the hashtags de jour - you can use a portExplore notebook in support! They are available pretty much worldwide through Amazon - find out more below…