The Plague and Crewing Pains

Quarantine in Malta, credit: Wellcome Collection.

During the bubonic plague, infamously known as the ‘Black Death’, in the mid fourteenth century, the disease wiped out an estimated one-third of Europe’s population, during a bad period between 1347-50. This sweep of the plague resulted in one of the mass fatalities in human history; and it was an impetus to take action.

Officials in the Venetian-controlled port city of Ragusa (now Dubrovnik, Croatia) passed a law establishing trentino, or a 30-day period of isolation for ships arriving from plague-affected areas. No one from Ragusa was allowed to visit those ships under trentino, and if someone broke the law, they too would be isolated for the mandatory 30 days. Over the next 80 years, Marseilles, Pisa, and various other cities adopted similar measures. Within a century, cities extended the isolation period from 30 to 40 days, and the term changed from trentino to quarantine, which is the root of the English word quarantine.

Even though Covid-19 is not the Black Death, you might be forgiven for thinking that it comes close, given the travel restrictions in place across some of Europe. It is certainly causing us some logistical problems.

For some of the longer, overnight passages, we made it known that we would welcome crew to help do watch-keeping duties. Watch-keeping is essentially being on deck (delegated to be in charge of the yacht) for 2- or 3-hours periods, usually during the night, whilst the skipper - and other off-watch crew members - get some rest or sleep. The watch-keeper keeps the yacht on course, tracks position, makes log entries on the hour, and prepares a hot drink ready for the new watch keeper, who is woken 10-minutes before the watch changeover. If there is any question whatsoever about navigation or safety matters, the watch-keeper will rouse the skipper and alert them to the issue.

Sailing friends have been quick to volunteer. In addition, as members of the Cruising Association (CA), we also have access to the CA’s Crewing Service. This is open to skippers looking for crew or vice versa, and excellent way to get in touch and get to know each other. It’s a sort of floating dating service. In addition, the CA organise Zoom video calls where skippers can present their sailing plans to prospective crew members.

We have had interest from 9 individuals or couples. These range from retired couples – who have been boat owners, but now want to sail the Med without the hassle of boat ownership – to single, male Aussie airline pilots, who just hitch-hike around Europe afloat. As MB has one guest double-berth cabin, a couple would be ideal, but two singles could share the space. If necessary, we can convert the saloon table and benches on port side into a double berth, but it’s not the most secure place to sleep, especially if you are bouncing around at night on port tack! As the longer passages take only two nights (e.g., Ginesta to Palma, or Cagliari to Trapani), the idea is that you give the crew a week’s holiday either side of the passage, to make it worth their while coming.

Needless to say, the current health situation – specifically individual country’s own travel restrictions - has thrown these crewing plans up in the air. To be clear, we are not complaining.

First, our young Scottish technician (Ruari) from Sunbird, was going to sail with us from Canet-en-Roussillon to somewhere in Spain. This was so he could to perform the handover outside France, and to sort out our goods export paperwork. However, as he is young and has only had a single vaccination, he is not allowed into France. But the Spanish will allow him into Spain! However, Boris (or Nicola?) requires that he quarantines for 10 days upon his return to Scotland (as Spain was an ‘amber’ country). This was not ideal, because, as a boat engineer, he cannot work from home! So, Alix and I were intending to sail MB to Port Ginesta, near Barcelona to meet him there. The irony is that we will know far more about the yacht by then than he will. It’s almost like we would be briefing him! And then the Balearics went from the ‘amber’ to the ‘green’ list. As this meant Ruari would not need to quarantine on return, the plan has changed to Alix and me sailing to Palma, Mallorca to meet Ruari there. However, Spain has now added new restrictions to entry; a double vaccination or a negative PCR test. But getting a negative test for Ruari should be achievable, or will it, given Scotland’s current positive test numbers?

Second, Alasdair and John were going to crew from Spain to Sardinia, Italy. Whereas John is retired and happy to quarantine upon his return to England, Alasdair has a busy work schedule to fit in and a wedding to get to in Jersey; the timings turned out to be too complex, sadly, for him to accept the crewing offer. And then we started reading the latest Italian restrictions for UK travellers. It turns out that a UK traveller, irrespective of vaccine status, and who has been in the UK within the prior 14 days, would have to quarantine for 5 days on arrival in Italy. That would not apply to Alix and me, as we left the UK on June 16th. But it would apply to John. Although he said he was happy to quarantine, Alix and I would probably also have to remain isolated on board with him; no shopping, sight-seeing, bars etc. We agreed with John that, unless the Italians changes the entry rules, we would probably have to cancel his crewing trip. As it turns out, John has just texted me to say that BA have just cancelled his flight from Cagliari back to the UK; the trip could never have happened anyway.

Finally, for the next long leg from Sardinia to Sicily, Tony and Rachelle are pencilled in. But, wisely, they have not and will not commit to flights until much nearer the time (probably around the beginning of August).

One by one, all our CA crewing contacts have politely withdrawn their offers to crew as the situation is too fluid and/or onerous. In fact, our Australian contact doesn’t know if he’ll ever be allowed to leave Australia again.

So, it looks like it will just be Alix and me sharing the watches. Fortunately, the nights are not too long at this time of year!