February 24th, 2024

Since we are still sailing in the great barrier reef the water is very smooth. You don’t feel anything when sailing. We are sailing off shore and you can see land on the port side but even on our side you see land occasionally which is more like a sandbar. The Captain said we are only in about 90 feet of water as we sail the channel on the great barrier reef.

At 9am the Captain came on the intercom to tell everyone that at 10am there would be an announcement about our itinerary from Tors, the owner of Viking. The said we could watch it on the pool deck, Star theatre or in our stateroom on the TV. Of course this 10am announcement messed up Mah Jongg for us since it is a sea day. We chose to watch from the room. As anticipated our new itinerary will start when e reach India. We will not be going to Mumbai as previously planned but they are still offering an optional excursions of multiple nights to go to the Taj Mahal. They have added several things to the trip to make it even more appealing. After that we had to Africa to go around it.

Our new route to avoid the Red Sea and the Suez canal. I took this picture off the TV screen but we anticipate a new map being delivered anyway.

They have been working on excursions and will have a list for us soon but they did say that they would offer and included safari for every passenger on the cruise. They also said if you wanted to get off you could and they were arranging for flights from Singapore where we spend 2 nights. They said compensation, for those getting off, would be on an individual basis.

We ended up playing Mah Jongg from 11 to 12 and of the 6 of us at Mah Jongg all were staying on. We have heard of lots of people who say they are getting off and even met a couple from Crawfordville (yes we have found even more people from our neck of the woods) who have already spoken to Viking and will be flying home the second night in Singapore. We are estimating that about 200 will get off just like in Los Angeles 2 years ago when the itinerary changed. Our group from the 21/22 are on for the long haul.

Lunch today had assorted eclairs.

We had a get together at 5pm of the Tallahassee and neighboring communities and as I said we are growing. There is the couple that retired in Crawfordville and then another couple of Tallahassee. We are going to have another dinner with all of us soon. It was about 50/50 for those who will stay on board and those who want to get off and not go around Africa.

We will be in Thursday Island tomorrow but there is not much to do there. It is a small island and there is not much to do there. You can’t even swim in the water because of crocodiles, sharks and stinging jelly fish. It is also a tender port so we have no plans and we will probably just go in to spend our last Australian dollars and to walk around a bit.