Imprisoned at sea!

This very annoying (from my perspective) interruption to my Hawaiian cruise series blog is brought to you by the NCL America line's Pride of America medical department acting under the auspices of the US Centre for Disease Control (“CDC”).

I boarded a Hawaiian island-hopper cruise aboard the NCL Pride of America at the port in Honolulu on Saturday October 10th. I am traveling in a group with two others. At embarkation, we were presented with the standard issue medical questionnaire and since all of us were feeling well, we answered all of the questions honestly, disclosing no known symptoms of nausea or upper respiratory infections. However, several days later, on Tuesday October 13th, after several days of suffering with cold/flu like symptoms (of increasing severity), one member of our travel party reported to the medical centre sick bay around 9:00 AM for treatment by the on duty attending physician—Dr. Ali Yasser.

The other two of us in our travel party reported with her to lend our support and waited for her in the medical centre reception area. About half an hour after arrival there and following an examination, the two of us waiting in the reception were ushered in to join the patient in an examination room. We were advised that our patient had tested positive for Influenza A and would be confined to her stateroom under quarantine for 5 days (until Saturday morning). We were also advised that, even though we had not been sharing a common stateroom with her (our cabins were separated by three decks, hers forward, ours aft), because we had been in contact with her (within 6 ft), enroute to the ship, at the dinner table and on our port excursions that we were also under suspicion of being of being infected with the Influenza A virus and would have to undergo testing. We submitted to the testing voluntarily. It took about 12 minutes to get the test results. Our two tests came back negative.

Despite receiving the negative test results for two of us, after checking with head office by phone, Dr. Yasser returned to advise us that we would also have to submit to quarantine and be confined to our cabin for at least three days (until Friday morning). We were further advised that we would also have to submit to re-testing for fever / the virus on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday mornings (nurse visits) before being released from quarantine. If we test positive on these subsequent occasions, our stateroom quarantine could be extended until Saturday as well.

As an alternative to stateroom quarantine we were offered the opportunity to debark the ship and to fly home or to make independent arrangements for accommodations on shore and flight arrangements to re-join the ship in port on Friday morning. Because of the incremental costs making that choice would entail, that was really not a viable alternative for us, so we quickly rejected it. After that, we were given respiratory filter masks to place over our noses and mouths, which we were told to don. We were then told to return to our cabins. We made our way unescorted from medical to our staterooms through the general passenger hallways and elevators. Of course, there were many questions to answer from inquiring passengers and crew that we met along our path from the 3rd deck to the 7th.

Once we were back in our staterooms we were contacted by Charles, the head room steward, who made arrangements to relocate us from the staterooms that had originally occupied (inside cabin on a the 7th deck) to balcony staterooms on the 10th deck (presumably on the assumption that having access to an open air balcony and sunlight would make a 72 hour in-cabin “house arrest” more tolerable). We also had to make arrangements for crew members to return a rental car that we had parked near the ship in port parking that we were required to return to Thrifty by 3:30.

Dr. Yasser made a subsequent visit to our staterooms to conduct a quick routine ear nose and throat examination. We then packed our clothes and moved up to our new staterooms. Since then, we have not left our room. We have had to call in all our meal orders for room service delivery. The room service menu is much more limited than dining room menus, however we have been supplied with dining room menus to order dinner from between 5:30 PM and 10:00 PM. Our stateroom attendant has come by to exchange linens and provide us with ice but to date has not entered our stateroom to clean.

As for activities to occupy ourselves in our room, the options are very limited. Other than staring out at the ports (wonder what fun we are missing out on a shore) there is a small TV set (with a snowy picture) and we have our laptops along. We have been using our laptops to review digital photos we took from our first few days on freedom on the cruise and to browse the internet. We have requested a credit to defray the high costs of web surfing at sea and were advised that our request would be forwarded to a senior passenger service crew member but so far no one has contacted us to follow up on our open request, 18 hours later.

In short, this is an experience I would not wish on my worst enemy… a heartbreaking way to have a dream vacation suddenly unravel. While I understand there is a need for the ship to be cautious and follow CDC protocols to protect the health of other crew and passengers and prevent a mass flu outbreak on board, particularly when H1N1 is expected to return with a vengeance this flu season, I do take exception to how our situation has been handled so far. No one has asked us what crew and/or passengers we may have had interaction with in the ships restaurants, lounges or excursion buses to contact them for testing. Also passenger services has not been especially pro-active in contacting us to ensure we are comfortable while suffering under “house arrest”. No one has offered to run to the library to check out books for us to read or to run to the games room to get us board-games to play to while our hours of incarceration away. No one offered us an on-board credit to defray the cost of purchasing internet packages (or even responded back to our inquiry with respect to that (quite reasonable) request- we had to call passenger services back later). Likewise, our outstanding requests to replace a broken coffee-maker and a room service menu have gone unresolved for a prolonged period.

I also now understand why the balcony stateroom that is our jailhouse went un-booked earlier. It is located directly under the pool-deck, which creates two problems: first, the edge of the deck protrudes to overhang the balcony—while this enhances shade, shelter and privacy, it limits the amount of sun you get and also creates noise problems as deck furniture is re-shuffled for events at dawn and dusk.

I will post further updates as our quarantine progresses, presuming my “condition” doesn’t suddenly deteriorate such that I am unable to sit up and write…
For now I am signing off from the MS Prison of Aloha