<\/p>\n
When Ritesh Mehra, 43, enlisted for a four-month stint as captain on a liquid gas tanker last July, he never expected to be stranded at sea until spring.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cTwice it has happened that the ports are not allowing crew change,\u201d Mehra told Reuters via Zoom from the bridge of the 80,000 tonne ship docked outside the Indian port of Haldia.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cMy family won\u2019t trust me anymore. I have been giving them dates when I would come home from December.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mehra, who has 20 years\u2019 experience at sea, is also trying to buoy the spirits of his nervous crew of 23, many struggling with fatigue and social isolation.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing chained to this particular place, you can almost say jail, is bearing on the crew now,\u201d Mehra said. \u201cThey are thinking more about it than the actual job at hand.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
An estimated one hundred thousand seafarers are stranded at sea due to the pandemic, the International Chamber of Shipping said last week.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Crew rotations depend on complex logistics, including securing transit visas and arranging chartered flights to repatriate sailors when they disembark at an international port.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In order to maintain effective operations and safety, sailors are only allowed off a ship when a replacement can be brought on board.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Arranging for the right entry permits, and quarantine and testing to take place during the short time when a ship is at port can be daunting because of coronavirus restrictions.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
As a result, crew rotations during the pandemic are often cancelled at short notice, while regular shore leave, once a mainstay of life at sea, has also come to a halt.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Near Hong Kong\u2019s busy waterways, visiting ships are often anchored for days as they unload goods to smaller vessels or barges.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Reverend Stephen Miller, who would normally come aboard to give counselling and advice to sailors, is now reduced to delivering bags with supplies, including SIM cards and snacks. He says he is concerned about the sailors\u2019 mental health.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can just imagine it for yourself, you have been planning to go home, maybe see a young child for the first time in many months, and then it is taken away from you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cThat obviously leads to sadness, which can lead to depression. If it is not talked about, it may sadly lead to people thinking that life\u2019s not worth living.\u201d<\/p>\n
maritime professional<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Ritesh Mehra, 43, enlisted for a four-month stint as captain on a liquid gas tanker last July, he never expected to be stranded at sea until spring. \u201cTwice it has happened that the ports are not allowing crew change,\u201d Mehra told Reuters via Zoom from the bridge of the 80,000 tonne ship docked outside …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[1034,7972,6013,997,540,2797,2465,6855],"class_list":["post-26548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-maritime-news","tag-coronavirus","tag-health","tag-mental","tag-sea","tag-seafarers","tag-stranded","tag-takes","tag-toll"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/26549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}