It's not all plain sailing on the holiday high seas

Apologies to Shakespeare and his famous quote from Hamlet. My dilemma isn’t about life and death as the Prince of Denmark’s was, but I am feeling the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” and my mind is definitely suffering.

Why? Because I’m booked on a cruise holiday.

Not just a little cruise that visits New Caledonia or Tasmania and returns quickly and safely to Sydney or Melbourne.

I’m booked on a 30-night cruise that crosses the Pacific Ocean from Sydney to Vancouver in Canada, via New Zealand, Tahiti and Hawaii.

As coronavirus spreads across the world and health experts tell us a global pandemic is inevitable, my daily internal soliloquy echoes Hamlet’s: To sail or not to sail.

This holiday wasn’t planned on a whim.

I didn’t see the news coverage of the Diamond Princess cruise ship and its passengers under quarantine in Japan and think, “that looks fun — that’s how I’d like to spend my holiday”.

No. I’ve had this cruise booked for nearly 12 months, I’ve been planning it for three years and dreaming about it for many more.

This is my post-children reward for not being a complete disaster as a single mother and managing to raise two well-adjusted young adults who are now making their own way in the world with university and work.

Yes, I’m still a mum-on-tap for everything from lessons in ironing shirts and making vats of spaghetti sauce for the freezer, to phone calls at any time of the day or night when there’s an emergency or they just want a chat.

I’m fine with that.

But I’m also fine with the fact they can survive without me while I chase the far blue horizon for a month.

What I am not fine with is the coronavirus. Or COVID-19, as it’s now cheerfully called.

My cruise aboard Royal Caribbean’s Ovation of the Seas is what the industry calls a ‘repositioning’ cruise.

That means every April, cruise companies move their ships from Australia where they have spent the summer, to the United States and Canada to cruise the northern summer season. Then in October, they do the whole thing again in the opposite direction.

So you only get two shots a year at a trans-Pacific cruise, and you have to plan and book a long way ahead. Or you miss out.

I was booked on this trip last year, but cancelled due to changes with family commitments, and just did an eight-day cruise instead, to test my sea-legs.

Successfully tested and eager for more, I rebooked the biggie for this year.

“No significant birthdays or graduations or anything else that will stop me this year,” I firmly told my family members.

“We promise,” they replied. And they have kept their promise.

This time, it’s a global health emergency that’s conspiring against me.

Last year, when I saw the way the wind was blowing, I had plenty of time to change to the smaller cruise, without financial penalty – only some personal pain.

Not this year.

I am past the point of no return for cancelling without losing most or — as time goes on — all my cruise fare, which had to be paid as COVID-19 emerged from China.

Also, I’ve had to commit to shore excursions. It’s snooze and you lose with the pick of the shore trips — I had to lock in my Lord of the Rings tour in NZ, and the best of the snorkelling excursions (swimming with sharks and stingrays in Bora Bora) — or miss out.

And don’t tell me travel insurance will cover it — there are ‘no coverage for pandemic’ clauses in their policies. I’d be better off breaking my leg while visiting the Pearl Harbor memorial in Hawaii than catching coronavirus, under travel insurance rules.

Not that catching the virus is really what I’m worried about. I’m fit and healthy and am unlikely to die from the thing.

And I guess there are worse places to be quarantined than Tahiti or Hawaii or Canada (I’ll load some extra books onto the Kindle and download some more Netflix onto my laptop, just in case).

And if it does mutate into an apocalypse, the cruise will be cancelled and I’ll get my money back.

And friends and family are all cheerfully saying: “Go ahead, you’ll be fine”.

And I probably will be fine.

It’s just taking the sparkle off the excitement for my holiday-of-a-lifetime, and my over-heated (not with a viral fever!) brain just can’t stop thinking about it. And worrying about all the things that might happen.

So until I’m actually cruising out of Sydney Harbour on April 20, I’ll still be thinking: To sail or not to sail.

I AM WATCHING...

Survivor (American not Australian). Yes, I know, I’ve shared my Survivor obsession before.

But hear me out — this 40th season is the BEST EVER. Big claim, but if anyone can make it, it’s this uber-fan.

Winners at War has brought together 20 past winners — that’s 20 people who have already won $1 million and the title of sole survivor (including Sandra, the only two-time winner).

Great fun to watch these alpha players outwit, outplay and outlast each other. I’m loving fan favourites like Boston Rob and his wife Amber (both winners who met on the show), Parvati, Yul, Tyson, Denise and crazy Tony.

I AM OUTRAGED...

And angry and sad and depressed and horrified about the deaths of Brisbane mum Hannah Clarke and her three beautiful children, murdered by her ex-partner and their father.

In a society that’s advanced enough to be planning a manned flight to Mars, how can women and children still be murdered in a suburban street in a heinous act of family violence?

I found myself weeping over the news coverage and feeling overwhelming despair.

And politicians — spare me your hand-wringing and speeches and tributes and vigils. JUST DO SOMETHING TO STOP IT HAPPENING AGAIN.

I AM SHOPPING...

For prescription goggles so I can see the sharks and stingrays when I go snorkelling with them in Bora Bora.

Otherwise, with my dodgy short-sighted eyes, they will just be dark blurs moving around a bigger blue blur. And the grey rays — well, they’ll probably just be invisible.

My snorkelling days had faded away to a distant memory as my sight faded over the years.

That was until the kids and I went to Port Douglas a few years ago, and the reef trip we went on had prescription masks. Who knew that was a thing?

Now I’m getting my own for my big adventure.

I AM RESEARCHING...

Ideas for what I’m going to see and do while I’m in Hawaii on my cruise holiday (see my column).

My ship will be a floating hotel in the capital Honolulu, on the island of Oahu, for two days, before we sail off for a day each on the island of Maui and Big Island (technically, that’s the island of Hawaii — yes, I’m confused too).

Visiting the Pearl Harbor memorial in Honolulu is a no-brainer, and I plan to see the city and coastal sights using the hop-on, hop-off Waikiki Trolley.

Also on my wish list are coffee and cacao (chocolate) plantations; a very big, very extinct volcano; and more snorkelling.