Helsinki

Captain’s Log, October 25th: We were delayed leaving St Petersburg as, at the last minute, the authorities told us they wanted to search the vessel for two wanted criminals. The search involved about thirty police and soldiers, and was fairly thorough, but of course fruitless. It wasn’t a great problem for the cruise, apart from shortening the time we have in Helsinki, and I was of course greatly relieved that the two guests had already departed.

After all that, when we were two hours into our journey, we got a message from St Petersburg that one of our lady passengers has been found asleep in the Hermitage museum. I don’t understand how it could happen, as the tour guide on each bus is under strict orders to count passengers before coming back to the ship. Our on-board advanced personnel system would normally have picked it up, when her card wasn’t detected coming back on ship, but during boarding, the computer system decided to install a Windows update, and so went out of service for about an hour. The poor old lady, 80-year-old Mrs Blenkinsop, has been arrested, but there’s little we could do other than inform the British consulate in St Petersburg.

At Helsinki, all went very well. About half the passengers took our tour, which turned out to be very profitable for us. Anyone in reasonable health could walk to the various tourist spots, but so many are elderly and infirm, that we were able to increase the price without losing bookings. A few passengers grumbled about this, but  when they were told that it was caused by the delay in St Petersburg, they seemed to accept it. So all is well.