It was the cruise much of the industry was watching.
The Wilderness Adventurer was the first overnight passenger ship to set sail in U.S. waters since the pandemic, with extensive health and safety protocols in place. But just three days after setting sail Aug. 1, one of the 36 guests -- all of whom tested negative at least 72 hours before leaving home -- learned that the state-mandated test they had taken on arrival in Juneau came back positive.
The result forced UnCruise Adventures to turn back to Juneau and cancel the rest of the season.
When follow-up tests on that passenger came back negative, one might have logically expected UnCruise owner and CEO Dan Blanchard to victoriously declare his ship Covid-free and try to salvage the remaining cruises.
Instead, Blanchard showed commendable honesty and leadership, refusing in a Zoom call with the media to declare the arrival test a "false positive." He emphasized that science has shown that false negatives are much more likely than false positives, and he added that logic would then indicate it is more likely the guest had a false negative before leaving home and very well could have been carrying the virus when they arrived in Alaska.
That's hardly the news anyone in the travel industry wants to hear: that despite some of the most stringent protocols in the country, a guest might have managed to get into Alaska and onto a ship with the virus. But it's possible. And it underscores, as Blanchard repeatedly emphasized, how important it is for the industry to put science first if it wants to rebuild trust and resume operations responsibly.
The good news is, if the guest did have Covid-19, the extensive protocols UnCruise and Alaska have put in place worked. None of the other passengers or crew tested positive for the virus, even though they spent three days on the Wilderness Adventurer together before it was called back to port.
Unfortunately, Blanchard said, the negative publicity surrounding Covid-19, their cruise and cruising generally makes its unfeasible to try to salvage the company's final 10 Alaska and Pacific Northwest sailings of 2020.
In her Aug. 9 Insight, acting cruise editor Johanna Jainchill says that what the industry will look at whether the ship
protocols worked to prevent onboard transmission.
Instead, Blanchard is focusing his attention on working with fellow domestic small-ship operators to lobby for a reliable longer-term solution: affordable access to rapid tests.
American Queen Steamboat Company CEO John Waggoner said he had been watching the UnCruise sailing very carefully and that "Dan did everything by the books."
After getting word of the positive test, Waggoner said he sent Blanchard a note "thanking him for taking one for the team."
"The lessons learned are that until we have a rapid test . .. you just don't know," he said. "It puts everyone in a tenuous situation."
Waggoner said his company is currently experimenting with rapid testing, but both he and Blanchard said that it isn't available on a broad enough scale right now to be able to test all guests and crew right before they board a ship.
So for now, Waggoner said, his plans to resume domestic river cruising this month have been paused.
"We'll still look at it every 30 days, but I'm just not optimistic," he said about the remainder of the 2020 season.
Acting cruise editor Johanna Jainchill was on vacation.