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MIAMI (WSVN) - The mother of a singer on a cruise ship off the coast of Nassau, Bahamas and her congressman are pleading with the cruise line to help get her back home in Illinois.
Julia Whitcomb sings her heart out entertaining passengers out at sea, but the glamour of working on a cruise ship is gone.
“I just feel really eager to get off the ship,” she said.
For more than 30 days, Whitcomb has hoped to get off Celebrity Cruises’ Infinity, which, according to the Marine Traffic app, is just northwest of Nassau.
7News spoke to Lisa Whitcomb, her mother, from her home in Illinois.
“If I can just get her off the ship, if I can just get her off the ship,” Whitcomb said.
Whitcomb is stuck at sea and on the ship due to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “No Sail” policy created because of COVID-19.
That policy only allows American cruise ship employees, like Whitcomb, to disembark ships if the cruise line gets them private transportation home.
That means she could not take a commercial flight or any public transport to get home to her mother in Illinois.
“They have more than met what would even be a post diagnosis quarantine of 14 days,” Whitcomb said. “Find a way to relax the standards enough to allow them to be transported home.”
However, Lisa feels Royal Caribbean, which owns Celebrity Cruises, should be chartering their employees home if that’s what it will take.
“These ships are treating them as if they are floating cargo ships, and these people are their freight, and that’s not OK,” she said.
U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Rep.-Ill., has stepped in, and he hopes he can help get his constituent off the Infinity.
“The company needs to do everything it can to take care of the people on its ships,” Kinzinger said. “The last thing in the world this can do is drag on.”
As for Julia, she’s documenting her struggles at sea on Facebook and said this is truly taking its toll.
“I wanna come home,” she said. “My mental and emotional state is really bad, and I’m past the point of recognizing some of the feelings I’ve been feeling.”
7News has reached out to the CDC and Royal Caribbean for comment, but they have not responded.
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