It’s back to the Sails

During the pandemic days, cruise lines had initially shied away from resuming voyages, but come July and cruise lines have once again embarked on summer voyage services, with the Norwegian cruise lines Hurtigruten who resumed its coastal voyage service from Bergan to Kirkenes earlier in June 17th 2020.

The Norwegian coast will be bustling with summer expedition activity as 3 more Hurtigruten ships – MS Trollfjord, MS Midnatsol and MS Richarrd will return to service, giving passengers an awe inspiring scenery and travel experience to the Norwegian Fjords.

The MS Finnmarken with a capacity for 628 passengers but now carrying 200 Norwegian and Danish passengers too set sail in earlier June, on a 12 day trip via 34 ports to the far north region of the country.

A spokesman from MS Finnmarken said “Over the pas months, weeks, days and hours, we’ve been preparing for this moment, we’re ready”. “In close co-operation with Norwegian Institute of Public Health and other experts, we’ve taken our extremely strict existing health and safety procedures and introduced additional new measures, we have been working rigorously to ensure all voyages are safe for both guests and crew and at the same time ensure that everyone can fully enjoy their voyage.”

Although the Hurtigruten line had kept itself active during the pandemic, it had cut down it’s services drastically limiting it only to a couple of ships operating only for the locals. It’s CO Daniel Skejeldam reiterated that cruises were being confined to one nationality and would open up to other nationalities only if the covid19 infection stats would improve.

The other ships of the Hurtigruten line that have set sail during June 2020 are, the hybrid-powered MS Fridjtof Nansen with 15 days round trips from Hamburg along the Norwegian coast and sister ship MS Roald Amundsen too has already begun its seven-night round trips this July month from Tromso to Svalbard.

The Hurtigruten line has introduced a number of new health and safety protocols intended to prevent the spread of the virus. These include new sanitation measures, the elimination of self-serve buffet dinning and the implementation of social distancing procedures aboard. Also another strategy which could prove very effective is limiting the passengers to half the ship’s capacity and also limiting capacity in areas like the pool and the ship’s sauna and fitness center.

In fact these safety protocols would be a trend setter to ensure safety and confidence among travelers to make their summer expeditions effortless and ensure their travel experiences continue to remain remarkably fascinating.