An Odyssey: From Stuck On A Cruise Ship To Old Mission's Library

In March, Vicki Shurly and her husband became stuck in international waters aboard a cruise ship. And in June, Shurly was tasked with reopening an institution on Old Mission Peninsula and figuring out how to run a library in these new times. We caught up with her about her odyssey on the South Seas and her observations on reopening.

Ticker: How was it that you were out of the country just as the pandemic began?
Shurly: I had spent some three years on the library’s new building project [the library had been housed in the building occupied by the former Old Mission Peninsula elementary school], and it was joyful…it consumed most of my life for three solid years, if you can imagine. And my husband…said, “We need to get away.” And he’s a bargain hunter and found this lovely cruise to places that we’d always wanted to see. It hit many south Polynesian islands, and we went ahead and booked it. It was scheduled for a little over three weeks beginning in the middle of February, and we were excited to just disappear from our normal world for a little while.

Ticker: You spent a couple days in Australia before leaving on the cruise…
Shurly: The night before the cruise, we were in a restaurant. For the first time, it kind of hit us that maybe this [virus] was bigger than we thought. A couple at the next table mentioned that Norwegian Cruise Line was refunding the cost of the cruise by 25 percent, and certain people wouldn’t be allowed. And they changed our itinerary a little.

Ticker: When did you realize that this was going to change all of our lives?
Shurly: It was probably about halfway through the cruise. Not even halfway. We went up the Australian coast — we didn’t set out for open sea until we hit Brisbane. We were headed toward New Caledonia, and the night before there was a letter on everyone’s bed, and [it stated that] if you were a national of Spain, Italy, or Germany, New Caledonia was not going to allow you off the ship. One man from Germany tried to slide through in front of us, which was the first time we realized what that little key card they give you on the ship means — it contains information like your country of origin…his sounded an alarm, and there were security officers who told him he couldn't leave the ship. I’d never seen anything like that before, and then he did back off, but I think that was our first realization that this wasn’t something that was contained…we disembarked at New Caledonia, went on to two ports in Fiji and Vanuatu, which is a very small Polynesian island, and we were supposed to be headed toward the French Polynesian Islands — Bora Bora and several other islands. And there was a night when everyone felt that the ship had turned around, and shortly afterward the captain came on and said that we had been denied entry into all of the French Polynesian islands.

Ticker: So then you were on odyssey an to make it back to Old Mission from the South Pacific.
Shurly: That’s a good way to put it. It was an odyssey. We were told at that point that Fiji would take us back; they had not had many cases, and they had already hosted us. We were, as far as anyone knew, a disease-free ship; we left before the pandemic. Anyone from Asia who had been in the affected countries was not allowed on the ship.

We got partway to Fiji, and Suva, which is their largest city, said no. They redirected to us toward Lautoka, which is a smaller city, and assured us that there were flights to Hawaii and Sydney. But we never got to port; they changed their minds. Then we headed toward New Zealand. New Zealand said they would take us as long as we went to a port far in the south. And we didn’t make it too far toward New Zealand before they closed their borders. And that night, I remember, that night was stressful. There was not panic on the ship, but you could tell among the staff and the passengers that there was some worry over how long we were going to be out in the South Pacific.

Ticker: Did they start running out of things?
Shurly: They did. They were very good about it. Fresh things disappeared. There was still a lot of food, but it was creative. There was a huge dish of what they call paella every night, and it was a mix of different things — rice and whatever meat they had. Lettuce disappeared. A lot of fresh fruits and vegetables disappeared. One morning a staff member — and the staff was incredible — but they did share that they had been told they could only have one protein a day. It started to get a little scary.

Of course, we didn’t end up in New Zealand…we were told we’re headed toward the Philippines; we’re headed towards South America. There’s a map in your cabin, and you can actually see where the boat is headed. We ended up in American Samoa and Pago Pago. They did not, to my knowledge, bring food onboard there. I’m not sure. It didn’t appear that they did, but they did allow the ship to refuel. There were police and bright lights on the ship all night, which was something I never experienced. You know, you become someone that no one wants.

Ticker: And then you finally made it back home.
Shurly: We did. After we refueled in Pago Pago, a day or two later we were told Hawaii would accept us. We weren’t sure though until we ended up at port because the governor of Hawaii had promised his people that his borders were completely closed. Somewhere along the line, half of the propulsion system on our ship failed, and the governor decided that for humanitarian reasons, they had to take the ship in, and they did.

Ticker: So obviously, when you came home, the library had been closed — and closed indefinitely at that point.
Shurly: The library was closed. My staff had done a great job of closing, following all of the rules and regulations. However, I’m the businessperson behind the library. There were bills to pay. The board had decided to continue to pay the staff. There was payroll to run, federal and state payroll reports that still were due. So, I lived here alone for a while, and it was an eerie thing. I've been in the building alone before, but that was by choice. This was by law, and it just felt almost like the world was ending, at least the world as I knew it.

Ticker: You’ve got the library open under strict terms, and in the backdrop, you can watch party buses going from winery to winery. How do you think reopening overall has gone so far?
Shurly: I’m a little leery of places of business just throwing open their doors. I think that there are many businesses here who have taken the same precautions that we have. We are tax-based funded; they have other economic decisions to make. I’m just mad when I see people in crowds on the beach or in businesses without masks…but I don’t know what the future holds for the library. I worry a little as businesses open quickly, that we will have a resurgence, that the library, which serves a huge need out here, will possibly be closed.

Ticker: Would you go on a cruise again? And if so, when do you imagine that would be?
Shurly: [laughs] We would. You know, it was something that could have happened anywhere…people were kind; people were understanding. We never felt in danger. I think the biggest issue for us was the despondency of not knowing when we would see our family again, or our home, or Old Mission.

This is an excerpt of a longer interview that appears in this week’s Northern Express.