It’s now Day 5 of our Pacific Crossing from Yokohama, Japan enroute to Whittier, Alaska. We are pretty much in the middle of nowhere at the moment. The captain has just advised passengers and crew that we have a gravely ill passenger aboard who needs medical evacuation to a hospital. He has advised after much research over the past 24 hours that the ship is now changing course to a small island in the middle of the Aleutian Islands called ‘Adak’ (Google), I’ve never heard of it.

He has advised that the island has a population of 326 and an air strip that was build in 1942 and used up until 1995 during the cold war. He advised that although disused the strip has been maintained and will be sufficient to allow an air ambulance from Anchorage to land. It is envisaged the ship will arrive at Adak around 11pm this evening.

The island is about 44 miles by 30 miles and is covered in snow around 173 days of the year. It is mostly tundra with caribou hunting and fishing the main activities. The airstrip was originally a naval airstrip with maintenance being taken over by Alaskan Transport Department. It has instrument landing facilities. This would be necessary as most days we rarely have more than 100 metres visibility beyond the ship for fog.

Such a small island would not have the facilities for this size ship to dock so the patient will need to be transported to shore by one of the tender (lifeboats) boats. It is not anticipated that this diversion will alter our arrival time in Whittier, Alaska significantly.

It seems colder this time here than when we visited in 2011. Yesterday it was -2 degrees celcius on the deck. Not that I was out there as I was sitting at Crooner’s Bar looking out the window at all the people rugged up as though they’d just crawled out of an igloo and were doing laps of the ship for exercise. That’s what I call ‘extreme cruising’. Another guy at the bar told me he had been out there earlier in the morning during a heatwave. The temperature was a whooping 3 degrees – hope he had suntan cream on.

Ruth is making the most of the sea days. Each night she gets the ‘patter’ (a newsletter of the next days events left in your mailbox at your door each evening) and pens in her itinerary for the next day. She really enjoys her daily lion dancing and then goes to such things as ‘elevator betting’ (where they bet on which elevator out of six will next open on their level), horse racing, hoop-la (to win bottle of champagne), carpet bowls, roulette, trivia or travel lectures. There is really plenty to do aboard and you never get bored.

I’m looking forward to getting to Alaska where they will take on some Alaskan Amber beer as I am over drinking VB from cans.

The Evacuation

The ship stopped about 700 metres off the coast of Adak around 11pm. A boat (similar to a tug) came out to the Princess. All we could see was a string of street lights in the distance with no perception of what type of inlet, if any, Adak possessed. The patient was placed aboard a tender and guided to the dock by the vessel that came out. Around 1am the tender returned to the ship and we were underway for Whittier.