Sailors can’t fathom why exemption doesn’t apply
When Halifax's Peter Blunden sailed his boat back to Nova Scotia from the Caribbean Island of Saint Martin Friday, officials told him his double vaccine status cleared him to come ashore and mingle with the population.
Blunden later learned that Canada Border Services Agency officers had provided him with bad information: he needed to self-isolate for two weeks because he arrived by sea. Funny thing is people flying into Canada do not have to obey the same COVID quarantine rules.
“I was told by (Canada Border Services) when I first arrived that since I was double vaccinated and I was a Canadian coming home I was clear to go home and to carry on,” Blunden said Monday.
“Then four individuals came back to our boat in the afternoon, and they said, ‘Sorry, we made a mistake. Marine
travel is not included in the exemption.'”
As of July 5, fully vaccinated Canadians and permanent residents can qualify for exemptions that allow them to fly into the country without undergoing quarantine.
“The marine rules do not allow me the exemption and I have to quarantine for two weeks,” said Blunden, the president and owner of East Coast Laundry Systems, based in Halifax.
“It's unbelievable that you can go to an airport, you can stand in a lineup with another couple thousand people and walk amongst the airport with five- or ten-thousand people, you can get on a plane with 300 other people and breathe the same air, and you can come back to Canada and there's no quarantine if you're double vaccinated. And that's the same as if you come by car and it's the same if you come by truck. But if you come by marine, they say it's written in the regulations that none of these exemptions apply, and you must quarantine for two weeks.”
Blunden and three other sailors spent 11 days at sea completing the nearly 3,000-kilometre journey from Saint Martin to Halifax in his Dufour 500, a 15-metre long vessel named Life of Reilly III.
“There's no credit for those 11 days and there's no consideration that private boats that are returning to Canada should have any exemption from any of this,” he said. “It's just ludicrous. We're safer than the people coming on planes.”
A fully vaccinated friend from Texas who accompanied Blunden on the voyage was denied entry to Canada. They were busy Monday getting him a COVID test at the Dartmouth General Hospital Drive-through site so he can fly home Tuesday.
“I've been given permission to stay on the boat (at the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron) with my friend because he's my friend and he travelled so far to help me bring my boat back. And then I've been given permission to relocate my quarantine site to my home after he leaves.”
Blunden's son, James — a last-minute fill-in for the trip — has only been vaccinated once for COVID. He's at home in a basement apartment self-isolating. But he knew that would be the case when he arrived.
Another Canadian sailor who accompanied them and has both COVID vaccines is also in quarantine.
Canada Border Services referred questions about why sailors don't qualify for the same exemptions as other fully vaccinated travellers returning home to the Public Health Agency of Canada. The latter did not provide a response by deadline, other than to say they can't speak to specific cases for privacy reasons.
Blunden left Life of Reilly III on the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent 16 months ago when the pandemic began. “When COVID hit we all had to just flee.”
He later had it moved to Grenada because insurance wouldn't cover any hurricane losses. “I had to pay people to move it — to put it below the hurricane line.”
Blunden and his son flew to Grenada to fetch the boat in early June, then met the other two sailors in Saint Martin and sailed back, non-stop, to Halifax.
He's left wondering why fully vaccinated Canadian sailors can't qualify for the quarantine exemption.
“I'm sure in Atlantic Canada there's probably two or three or four boats a week that people are trying to get back home,” Blunden said.
Halifax sailor Judy Robertson, who hopes to fly to Greece later this summer to retrieve her own boat, can't fathom why quarantine rules are different for people who arrive here by water.
“Even if you're out there (at sea) for 14 days, it doesn't count,” Robertson said Monday.
“There's a lot of Canadians who haven't been able to get their boats home and they're trying to get them home. Even people who have got boats across Lake Champlain — they keep them in New York — they can't bring them back to Canada (without quarantining on arrival).”
Dr. John Ross, the medical director of Praxes, a Halifax company that offers medical advice to mariners, doesn't understand why time at sea can't be counted towards quarantine.
“An increasing number of yachts are and will be returning from the U.S. and Caribbean area over the next month or so. A voyage from Florida or the Caribbean is generally 10-14 days. Most crew members are tested prior to departure. They do not stop along the way, or for fuel and real basics only if needed. So, they are quarantined during that time,” Ross said in an email last month to provincial health officials.