Diego Garcia

Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Yesterday we heard a rumor that we were going to be stopping in Diego Garcia which is a British island in the middle of nowhere just down south from the tip of India. The US has a base there. We had three people on board that needed medical attention. Our next stop is India which wouldn’t be a good place for the care they needed. The captain has always wanted to stop here but has not had a reason until now. He had to get special permission to stop because of the military security around this island. Once he got permission he cranked up the engines last night and we sped across the Indian Ocean as fast as we could and arrived at Diego Garcia this morning about 7:30 AM. We were met by inflated military boats with mounted machine guns and armed military personnel along with two tug boats. Next a bigger military boat appeared with more armed soldiers and a guard dog. The dog and some of these armed men got on our ship to look around and see if we were legitimate. Maybe they thought we were pirates? Once they decided we weren’t pirates and not a threat they had another boat come out that the patients were finally transferred to. One patient was a crew member that has a retina problem, one was a student that has a problem with her blood platelets and the other was a student that was taken out on a stretcher and I don’t know what the problem was. They are going to be flying to Singapore for medical care. Quite an exciting morning but sad to lose some more of our passengers. I heard the boy that got left back in Mauritius is out of the hospital and doing ok. I wonder if we will see him back on the ship when we get to India on Sunday.