Half speed

An anonymous commenter has just drawn my attention to the fact that the Europa is currently crusing at half speed. Here's where the Europa was at 9am GMT today.
This all looks a bit odd. Europa was scheduled to leave Mauritius at 1300 hours local time on Sunday, and as far as I can tell she did. She was due to arrive in Mahé at 1500 hours local time on Tuesday, i.e. 50 hours later, and again she seems to have been on schedule.

In our travel documents the stretch across from Mahé to Mombasa is scheduled to take 58 hours, and it looks as if Europa is on time. But compare the distance from Mahé to Mombasa with Mauritius to Mahé. Do Costa deliberately take their foot off the gas on their way to Mombasa?

Why is Europa currently dawdling along at only 11 knots when its 'cruising speed' is 19 knots? Have the latest passengers also been showered with oily smuts from a suddenly smoky funnel? It's so tempting to imagine those Danish engineers wearily packing their cases for yet another emergency flight to Mombasa.

Mind you, to be fair to Costa (shock, horror!) maybe they're struggling eastwards against those pesky 'counter-currents' that delayed us so badly as we sailed south to Réunion ;o)

I've been tracking the Europa daily, recording its Lat/Long from the website at http://www.costacruisesasia.com/B2C/PAO/Shopping/Ships/EU/default.htm Unfortunately, I shall be away from home from early tomorrow morning (Saturday) until Tuesday night. Could someone keep recording Europa's position and e-mail details to me at costafailure@gmail.com ?

Europa is due to arrive at Mombasa at 0600 local tomorrow morning, i.e. 0900 GMT. Can someone check on this? Also, she's due to depart for Madagascar at 1800 local (2100 GMT), i.e. after a stay of only 12 hours.

Then she should arrive at Nosy Bé, Madagascar at 1000 local (0700 GMT) on Monday and leave at 1900 local (1600 GMT).

Then it's an arrival on Tuesday at Diego Suarez at 0800 (0500 GMT) departing at 1700 (1400 GMT) followed by an arrival on Wednesday at Tamatave at 1400 (1100 GMT).

If you want to convert a Lat/Long to a map position and see EXACTLY where Europa is simply type it (or Edit/Copy/Paste) into Google Maps - http://maps.google.co.uk/

I think we all know that the poor people currently on board won't get to Madagascar. Apparently, ever since this cruise started last December the Europa's arrived in Madagascar only once, and that was oprobably just so that Richard Wünsch could take some photos to use in his lectures and show us where we wouldn't be calling ;o)