Even before the Coronavirus pandemic hit the world like a ten-ton truck, cruise ships have always called for a little bit of caution. Anytime you have a bunch of people crammed together in one place, the risk of disease transmission goes up immensely. Not only that, but there are other hazards as well. Still, nobody wants to stay inside all the time, so here are a few tips that will help keep your family healthy on a cruise.
Practice a Little Isolation
One of the fun things about a cruise is interacting with all the different people on board. However, you might want to reduce your exposure to others in order to protect you and your family from disease. It’s a good idea to mostly stay with your family and any other known person who accompanied you on the cruise, or simply enjoy the time being alone.
Of course, we are not recommending that you isolate yourself entirely. Indeed, you don’t always have the option of avoiding crowds when you’re on a boat, but the recent crisis should make things a little less crowded. If you have to be amongst the crowd, make sure you and your family are wearing masks and sticking together.
Make Sure Everyone Knows How To Swim
Falling from the deck of a cruise ship is a scary thought for most people, and it does happen from time to time. Most cruise ships serve alcohol and allow children, so it isn’t surprising that both drunks and young children have often fallen overboard. You might think that you can survive such a fall merely because you will land in the water. In reality, this may not be the case.
The best thing you can do in this department is to make sure everyone in your party knows how to swim. That will give them the greatest chance of survival in the unlikely event that they fall in the pond. Swimming lessons are not particularly expensive, or you could teach your friends and family in your spare time. Even after this, we recommend that you wear a life jacket whenever you are above decks.
On this subject, make sure that all the members of your party actually know how to swim. A lot of people might say that they know when they don’t! They might be embarrassed, or they might simply think they are much better swimmers than they actually are. A group outing to the local swimming pool should give you a better idea of where to start with this step. You simply watch everyone and determine who needs help.
Try To Stay As Sanitary As Possible
In the midst of the current global pandemic, many have been left wondering: when will cruise lines resume in a safe manner? However, even under the best of conditions, a cruise ship can turn into a breeding ground for disease. As we mentioned earlier, this is mostly the result of people being crammed together for a long period. This problem is so common that the CDC (Centers For Disease Control) has a website that catalogs the worst offenders.
We highly recommend that you use this website to search the inspection history of any cruise ship you might consider boarding. You can immediately see how many inspections have been passed and how many have failed, as well as the reasons for the grade. Obviously, one or two small violations are not something to get too worried about, but a pattern of failed or problematic health inspections should be a deal-breaker.
Even after doing this, you should be wary of touching guardrails and other surfaces where people normally put their hands. All it takes is one filthy person to touch that guardrail after going to the bathroom without washing their hands first. On that note, frequent hand-washing is an important habit in such places. Some people might think you are autistic if you do it too much, but that’s a lot better than the alternative.
Conclusion
If you choose to book a cruise at a time like this, you had better go into the situation with your eyes open. Don’t think that this will be a normal vacation, because it probably will not be. If nothing else, government regulations will likely keep a cruise ship from operating under normal procedures at this time. Either way, we hope that this article will help you to keep yourself and your family safe.
