Cruise ship with Henderson residents bound for California
Celebrity Cruises said in a tweet Tuesday that a cruise ship that had been stuck off the coast of Chile will embark on a 10-day voyage to California.
Local Chilean authorities have given Celebrity Eclipse permission to refuel and load provisions in Valparaiso, Chile. The ship will then sail to San Diego, where it was already scheduled and cleared to arrive later this month.
— Celebrity Cruises (@CelebrityCruise) March 17, 2020
John Burnette, a Henderson man who is on the Celebrity Eclipse with his wife and her family, said in a text Tuesday that the ship’s captain announced to passengers late Monday that the ship had docked in Valparaiso, Chile, to get fuel before leaving for San Diego on Wednesday.
He said in the text that supplies are starting to run low, and provisions “cleared customs earlier and are on the dock and being barged over to us tonight and tomorrow morning.” As far as he knows, Burnette said, no one on the Eclipse is showing symptoms of COVID-19.
Burnette said about 65 Chilean citizens got off the ship “under watch from the military,” and he is unsure what the American passengers’ reception in San Diego will look like.
Another Henderson resident, Zelda Gilbert, said in an email Tuesday that she and her husband Paul are on the ship as well, and “it’s been an adventure.”
Gilbert said the ship’s captain and crew have been great at communicating information to the passengers and keeping everyone comfortable. She said the only real problem is that passengers have been stuck in long lines.
“Lines to give disembarkation information to the Chileans, not that that helped, lines to pick up passports, and just now lines to return them,” Gilbert said in an email. “And very long lines to turn in lists of medications we’ll be running out of before we land in California.”
But ultimately, Gilbert said, passengers seem to be keeping their spirits high.
“We had certainly hoped to disembark in Chile, but San Diego works,” Gilbert said. “The mood on board has remained upbeat, and I have only the highest praise for the crew as they go about their duties.”
Contact Alexis Egeland at aegeland@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0335. Follow @alexis_egeland on Twitter.