SeaDream halts first Caribbean cruise due to Covid-19

SeaDream Yacht Club has halted a cruise in the Caribbean following several positive coronavirus tests among passengers, the company said on Friday.

The SeaDream 1 vessel has returned to port in Barbados for all passengers to be re-tested.

Many of the passengers who were quarantined were expected to get off the ship on Saturday, the vessel’s captain announced early Friday, according to Gene Sloan, a passenger writing for The Points Guy.

Sloan said that in a ship-wide address over the intercom system, SeaDream 1 captain Torbjorn Lund said authorities in Barbados, where the ship currently is docked, had cleared passengers who had repeatedly tested negative for Covid-19 over the past few days to depart the vessel on Saturday for flights back to their home countries.

In a follow-up announcement not long after, Lund suggested that a few passengers who had tested negative might even leave the vessel on Friday.

Five of the seven passengers who tested positive are part of a family that was travelling together as a group and staying in the same cabins. The other two passengers who have tested positive are a husband-and-wife couple staying in the same cabin.

There are 53 passengers on the vessel, Sloan says, which is a small, yacht-like ship that normally sails with 112 passengers. There are 66 crew on board.

SeaDream says the ship’s medical staff tested all crew members and all tests came back negative.

The company says every crew member is certified for the WHO’s Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) for novel coronavirus course and Covid-19 Contact Tracing course from Johns Hopkins University and it operated successfully earlier this year in Norway, completing 21 voyages during the summer season as the first luxury line to resume sailing.

“After completing a successful summer season in Norway, we implemented even stricter health and safety protocols for our Barbados winter season. All guests were tested twice prior to embarkation and we are in the process of re-testing guests,” says SeaDream’s Andreas Brynestad. “We are working closely with local health and government authorities to resolve this situation in the best possible way. Our main priority is the health and safety of our crew, guests, and the communities we visit.”