The fleet of the luxury company Hapag-Lloyd Cruises is heading back to its homeport Hamburg Germany.
The ship HANSEATIC Nature (2019-built) is the first to sail back and is expected to arrive in Hamburg on April 20. The sistership HANSEATIC Inspiration (2019) and the older fleetmates EUROPA (1999) and EUROPA 2 (2014) are also en-route to Port Hamburg. All three are scheduled to arrive on May 2 and will remain docked there until Hapag-Lloyd resumes operations. The fleetmate BREMEN (1990) will remain anchored off Port Auckland NZ.
The ships Nature and Inspiration will go to the Blohm+Voss Shipyard for repairs. EUROPA 2 will dock at Hamburg Cruise Center Altona, EUROPA will berth at Hamburg's RoRo-Terminal. O'Swaldkai.
The last Hapag-Lloyd Cruises' guests returned home on March 21. The cruise operator brought around 1,000 passengers home from all over the world, due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Charter flights had to be organized as scheduled flights had been cancelled.
HANSEATIC nature, which is in the North Atlantic on her course for Hamburg, has picked up the crew from her sister ships in Barbados (Bridgetown), EUROPA and HANSEATIC inspiration, bringing them back to the port of Hamburg.
To keep fit, the crew members on HANSEATIC nature started a project named “Walk the Cruise”. The idea is to cover the entire distance of the journey on foot until HANSEATIC nature reaches her homeport in Hamburg - a total of 7,600 nautical miles (14,084 kilometres / 8,751 miles). For this reason, every day, on the ship's Deck 9 the 138 crew are each walking or jogging 28 laps of 135 m (148 yards). That totals 3.8 km (2.4 mi). At the end of the 27-day sailing, this should take them to around 7,600 nautical miles.
For Coronavirus updates on cruise ship quarantines (infected passengers and crew) and top-pandemic countries (COVID-19 cases and deaths, daily updated statistics) see at CruiseMapper's Norovirus page.