Couple Sailing Across The World Had No Clue The Entire Planet’s Facing A Coronavirus Pandemic

iStockphoto / NAPA74

Ignorance is bliss, right? I’d certainly love to be stuck in an Outward Bound month-long camping trip for the past few weeks and miss the complete decline of civilization as we know it.

Or in the case of this couple, sailing across the Atlantic Ocean on a sailboat from the Canary Islands to the Caribbean. They departed the Canary Islands in February, vaguely aware that there was a virus situation in China but fully expecting that it would’ve worked itself out by the time they made it to wherever it was they were headed. And I don’t blame them, every pandemic throughout the past century has pretty much worked itself out within a matter of weeks, hasn’t it?

In the 25 days they spent at sea between the Canary Islands and the Caribbean the proverbial floor fell out and the poop hit the fan. They had to bust out their GPS logs to prove they’d essentially been ‘self-isolating’ for over a month in order to gain entry to any country after several told them to kick rocks. The BBC reports:

“We told our shore contacts we didn’t want to hear any bad news, which was a difficult job as it was pretty bad news,” says Elena, whose family is from Lombardy – the worst-hit region in Italy.
“We first attempted to land in one of the French territories in the Caribbean but when we arrived we found all the borders were closed and the islands were closing down,” Ryan says. “Even at that point we assumed it was a preventative measure due to the high season. We thought the islands didn’t want to run the risk of a few tourists infecting the locals.” Back on their boat, the couple diverted their travel to Grenada and finally hit an area out at sea where their 4G was good enough to find out what was happening. It was at that point they started to understand the magnitude of the virus.
“A friend of ours was already in Saint Vincent, which is where we were aiming to head. We managed to get in contact with her 10 hours before we were due to dock. “She told us we were going to be refused entry as I’m an Italian citizen, even though I hadn’t been to Italy in months,” Elena says. Luckily, the couple had been tracking their boat via a GPS signal. They were able to prove their travel history, which showed that not only had they not been to Italy in months, they had also been in isolation for 25 days at sea. They were finally able to stand on dry land. (via BBC)

Ryan was from the Italian region of Lombardy the hardest-hit region of Italy, and he was completely floored once he was able to contact his father and learn just how dire the situation was in his hometown.

“It was a hard conversation. He told me to not panic but our town had been one of the worst affected areas globally. He sent me a New York Times profile on our hometown, which made it all feel suddenly real. I was shocked.

“It’s a very macabre picture at home, there are no more coffins, no more cemetery space or room in the crematorium. My family is thankfully safe at home and have been in lockdown for over six weeks, but people we’ve known for years have died.” (via BBC)

https://twitter.com/tuxlovesyou/status/1253015064711516162

According to the report, the couple is hunkered down and safe in Saint Vincent where hurricane season will begin in earnest in June and they want to get back onto the high seas before then. It’s hard to blame them for wanting to get out of the way of an eventual hurricane but where does someone even go right now that won’t be completely overrun by this virus in the next several months with the way things are trending?

To read the full profile you can click here.