Enforced Sea Day

I was woken just after midnight by the Chief Engineer. We have a crisis looming in terms of fuel. We thought it would have been just about possible to get to St Lucia, and then finally back to the island of Gamalia. However, the Chief Engineer has reworked his calculations using a calculator, and the conclusion is that his original back-of-an-envelope calculations were incorrect.

To spend money on buying fuel is out of the question, if I want to keep my job, so after some discussion, and more calculations, I concluded that we had to skip the stop at St Lucia. So I gave orders for the ship to slow to half-speed, and head directly to Gamalia. The story for the passengers will be that we have heard from our contacts of new Covid infections in St Lucia that the authorities are not reporting, and that we are not taking chances of infection by visiting there.

At breakfast, there were complaints from some of the passengers, who did not accept our information about infections. They can complain all they like, as we’ll be sticking to the story. My favorite phrase in such situations is “There’s nothing more important than health and safety”. People find it hard to argue with that.

I’m relieved not to have fuel issues, although I feel a little regret too, at losing the revenue from the St Lucia tours. Still, one has to learn to compromise when running a vessel like ours.

In late morning, I got news that one of our passengers has died. It’s annoying as there’s always paperwork when I have to record fatalities. But in this case, there’s a particular concern, as this man was one of those who had the mystery illness from that rum. We found a one-gallon container in his room, half-full of our rum, and I can only assume that he bribed a crew member to get it for him before we threw it all away. That raises a real concern over a possible autopsy, when his body is returned to Florida.

Then a great suggestion from my first officer! We decided that a burial at sea would be tasteful, and honor the man’s stated love of the Caribbean, or at least that’s what we’ve recorded. He was travelling alone, so thankfully no one to argue with, and we conducted the burial from the side door on the hull, out of sight of the passengers. Needless to say, that rules out any autopsy finding traces of our rum.

In the evening, I was told that the sewage problem was still there in the bilges of the vessel, and that there seemed to be many more rats than usual. The rats don’t concern me, so long as they stay down there, but the sewage is a worry, as we have a pump going full-time now to clear it, and not succeeding. Still, tomorrow we will be back in our home port, and then it’s someone else’s problem!