KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Wak­ing up to the warm Caribbean sun glis­ten­ing on the blue wa­ters off Cha­cachacare Is­land is ide­al­ly a pic­ture of per­fec­tion, but for Swedish cit­i­zen Gre­go­ry De Fre­itas, it’s been his on­ly im­age for the past 16 days.

The Coast Guard de­tained the sailor and his son, who are al­so T&T cit­i­zens, for breach­ing T&T’s bor­ders af­ter Gov­ern­ment shut the door to na­tion­als and non-na­tion­als alike on March 22.

The men re­turned from St Lu­cia aboard the SY An­na just three hours late, un­aware of the bor­der re­stric­tions that were im­ple­ment­ed less than 48 hours be­fore.

They long for re­lax­ing show­ers, the com­fort of fresh clothes and the free­dom to stretch their legs on land.

Gre­go­ry said the Coast Guard’s treat­ment is good. Of­fi­cers call them twice dai­ly and al­low fam­i­ly mem­bers to bring food and oth­er sup­plies. How­ev­er, there is the con­stant wor­ry about their an­chor­age. With Cha­cachacare be­ing on the wind­ward side of the is­lands, the drag­ging an­chor threat­ens to dam­age their yacht and en­dan­ger their lives.

A manda­to­ry quar­an­tine pe­ri­od of 14 days for any­one who en­tered T&T since the gov­ern­ment im­ple­ment­ed COVID-19 trav­el mea­sures end­ed on Mon­day. When they asked to leave, coast­guards­men in­formed that the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has to grant an ex­emp­tion.

“I even asked them if we could come on­shore to ex­er­cise, but they said we couldn’t,” De Fre­itas said.

With a com­put­er and in­ter­net ac­cess, Gre­go­ry reached out to Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young. But by yes­ter­day evening, there was no re­sponse and the De Fre­itas men were still con­fined to the SY An­na.

Gre­go­ry told Guardian Me­dia that they’ve com­plied with all in­struc­tions, which in­clud­ed record­ing their tem­per­a­ture for the past ten days. In good health, he told Young that he was cog­nisant of the COVID-19 cri­sis and gave as­sur­ances to do every­thing pos­si­ble to avoid con­tract­ing the virus.

He said they would ad­here to so­cial dis­tanc­ing rules and the SY An­na would be moored at the T&T Sail­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTSA) in Ch­aguara­mas where he and his son will stay un­til the bor­ders are re­opened. They hope to re­turn to Swe­den soon.

“Should we be grant­ed en­try then, of course, we shall do every­thing in our pow­er to stay virus-free and fol­low the rules of self-iso­la­tion on­board An­na. Should there be a need to test for the virus, then that we would do so will­ing­ly. We have been asked, a few days ago, to mon­i­tor our tem­per­a­tures and this we have done and kept a record. At the TTSA we shall, of course, live on­board An­na and fol­low the rules of so­cial dis­tanc­ing set up by the au­thor­i­ties.” 

Gre­go­ry, his two adult sons and a friend left Ch­aguara­mas on March 7 for An­tigua; five days be­fore Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh an­nounced that T&T had its first con­firmed case of the COVID-19. At that time, the in­abil­i­ty of Guyana to de­clare the win­ner of its gen­er­al elec­tions was the biggest news. On reach­ing St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, they met a closed har­bour. They went to St Lu­cia around March 18 where en­try which al­so had re­stric­tions.

In his let­ter to Young, he said “On be­ing made aware that your gov­ern­ment had de­cid­ed to stop en­tries by non-na­tion­als in­to Trinidad, I made prepa­ra­tions to im­me­di­ate­ly re­turn to Trinidad from where I had two weeks ear­li­er, start­ed on a sail­ing trip up the is­lands. At that time, I was in St Vin­cent and there I cleared off two of my crew; non-na­tion­als, who flew out of St Vin­cent in the fol­low­ing days. On­board my sail­ing boat, SY An­na, are my­self and my son, both cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go. We have dual cit­i­zen­ship, Swe­den and Trinidad and To­ba­go. Our goal was to re­turn to SY An­na´s home­port at the Trinidad & To­ba­go Sail­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTSA) in Ch­aguara­mas. My yacht is reg­is­tered in Swe­den but the home port is Port-of-Spain.

“At the time of me turn­ing around, I had vis­it­ed on­ly Grena­da and St Vin­cent, nei­ther of which had any re­stric­tions con­cern­ing the out­break of COVID-19. I was aware of the pan­dem­ic and prac­tised a con­stant aware­ness of the dan­ger and thus had min­i­mal con­tact with the lo­cal in­hab­i­tants and oth­er “yachties.” 

We have had no hu­man con­tact since leav­ing Be­quia in St Vin­cent on Sat­ur­day 21 March at 10 am.”

There are two oth­er ves­sels an­chored off Cha­cachacare, car­ry­ing Ger­man and Czech flags. De Fre­itas said while there no com­mu­ni­ca­tion with them, he was con­cerned whether they were get­ting sup­plies.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Young for a com­ment but there was no re­sponse.