Dear PICTON CASTLE crew for our voyage to the South Pacific,
It is pretty clear that have been some dramatic and significant changes in our world in the past few weeks. We continue to look into how these changes affect PICTON CASTLE and our upcoming voyage to the South Pacific.
As we announced earlier this week, we will be delaying the start of the voyage by a month. This seems like a good start on dealing with this situation, what with bans on travel, etc. We have been consulting with industry colleagues, medical advisors around the world, and in the ports we plan to visit to figure out the current situation and how we all anticipate it will look a few months from now. We will continue to do so. We increasingly believe that setting back the sailing date adds a great deal of confidence in a proper start to our voyage. And not much flying into Nova Scotia over the next few weeks, anyway.
It is a complicated patchwork of issues and there are a lot of factors to consider, a lot pieces to the puzzle to get to fit together. We are making progress but don’t have all of the answers yet. We are very committed to making this voyage happen, as safe as can be, even if we have to wait an extra month for it to begin. For right now, delaying the joining date and sailing date gives us many advantages. Not the least of which is that by setting back the planned sailing date a month, ports and agencies have time to get settled and organised. And also if China is any measure, we are likely to see relief, and we could be over the hump of this in three months time.
As things continue to develop, we are re-examining the routing of the voyage. It still looks like no major changes. We’ll provide updates on how that’s going and hope to have a finalized new voyage plan by the end of this month. Right now we are pretty confident the main changes will be quite manageable, but it is premature to speak in absolutes at this time.
In the meantime, we encourage you and your families to do your best at staying healthy. We all need to continue to wash our hands, practice social distancing, and follow the directions of our health authorities. We want you to be strong and healthy when it comes time to set sail on this exciting voyage to the South Seas.
Maggie and I want to express our gratitude to all those weighing in with their sage counsel, experience and dedication to the amazing opportunity this voyage affords us all.
Daniel D. Moreland, Master, Barque PICTON CASTLE – March 20, 2020