Events of Saturday 15th February 2020
After Norfolk Island, the ship’s next destination was planned to be New Caledonia which, despite its name, is French territory. Unhappily, towards the end of 2019 a new disease emerged in China called ‘Novel Corona’ or ‘Coronavirus’ and many countries has started to tighten their entry qualifications for health for travellers via countries which had seen instances of ‘Coronavirus’. Most of the passengers on the ship had reached Auckland via Singapore and Singapore had detected travellers with ‘Coronavirus’. There was some negotiation between Noble Caledonia and the French authorities in New Caledonia but, whilst we were already under way, it became clear that we would not be able to land there. There was no alternative but to skip New Caledonia and divert, a day early, to our next destination, Vanuatu. Norfolk Island to New Caledonia is a distance of 434 nautical miles, for which a complete day at sea had been allowed. To continue further north to Vanuatu added a further half day of sailing.
Our sailing during Saturday was punctuated by breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner. The superb meals were normally available in both the Restaurant on deck 2 and the open-air Lido on deck 5. Afternoon tea was in the Caledonian Lounge. In addition, a number of lectures were arranged during the day:-
09:30 Sue Forbes:
‘How to get the best photos of the Pacific Islands’
11:00 Phoebe Olsen:
‘Peopling Oceana - A Story 50,000 years in the making’
17:00 Roy Clare:
‘Tangata Whenua – the people of the land’
A slide from the 'Peopling Oceana' lecture.
I also took advantage of the 'Open Bridge' policy to make the first of a number of visits during the voyage to the bridge. There's a short post about those bridge visits here
On autopilot, heading for Tanna, on 15-Feb-2020 ('Caledonian Sky' Bridge 2020).
As we continued north, we were also still moving to the west, so overnight the clocks went back a further hour.
Related posts on this website
This is the fifth post in the series labelled 'Tropic of Capricorn’. The first post is here.
Clicking on the 'Next report' link will display the post describing the next events. In this way, you may read about the trip in sequence.
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Alternately, clicking on the 'All my Tropic of Capricorn reports' link displays all the posts on this trip in reverse date-of-posting order.
All my Tropic of Capricorn reports
My pictures
This blog post was first published on the ship via a satellite link with limited capacity so the picture links were added later. Pictures in this post can be viewed uncropped, where necessary, by clicking on the image. Selecting from the albums below allows viewing or downloading in various resolutions:-
'Caledonian Sky' in 2020
Lectures aboard 'Caledonian Sky' 2020
'Caledonian Sky' Bridge 2020
[Link to pictures added 5-Mar-2020: Minor edits, pictures embedded 12-Apr-2020: Link to Bridge Visits added 5-Nov-2020]
