19th of March 2020 : 

Our contract at sea is suddenly shortened.  

In a few days time, we are going to be repatriated home. 

During these difficult times, people with a positive mindset can make a great impact and lift the spirits high around them.

A Scottish author and Ex Crew Member on one of the world’s best known Cruise lines, has been taken aback by the positive reviews of her debut book that she began writing 20-years-ago when she left life at sea and completed during lockdown. 

The unprecedented level of unemployment caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic has forced many people to seek employment opportunities and search for a job. There have been reports in the past month of an increasing number of cruise ship recruitment scams seeking to take advantage of the people during the crisis. Fraudsters are known to create official-looking websites or profiles on social media in order to convince potential victims they are legit.

An international team of researchers from the University of Queensland (Australia), Royal Holloway University of London (UK), the World Maritime University (Sweden), and Uppsala University are working on a survey for international seafarers during the COVID-19 pandemic as part of a research project.

With the restart of cruises in Germany, and the final preparations by the cruise lines in Italy, hopes are high amongst the crew who are back in their home countries eagerly awaiting their sign on dates. In Italy, Costa Cruises and MSC Cruises are ready to initiate voyages on 4 ships as soon as they receive the green light from the Italian government. Final efforts have also been made for staffing cruise ships with a sufficient number of crew.

As some of the cruise lines are already making plans to set a small number of cruise ships back in operations and implement new safety protocols in order to do so, many crew members are wondering what the “new normal” will look like for them once they join and assume their daily duties and life back on board.

During the International Maritime Summit on Crew Changes hosted by the UK yesterday, government representatives from 12 countries express their appreciation to seafarers and pledge to urgently resolve issues that have arisen due to the COVID-19 pandemic and crew changes.

Every question about the damage done by the coronavirus and when things will get back to normal for the cruise industry will be hard to answer. The following text is an honest opinion from a crew member sharing his thoughts about the future of cruising.

Today, July 6, Scarlet Lady arrived at her birthplace Genoa, Italy, where the ship will spent the next 20 days at the Fincantieri shipyard for routine maintenance work. During this time some of the remaining crew onboard will be repatriated. Virgin Voyages announced on June 24, that Scarlet Lady left her home port Miami for “a quick trip across the Atlantic to help us make sure more Crew can make it home safely and get things shipshape before setting sail this Fall.”