A A

HALIFAX, N.S. —

Seeing the outside of their hotel rooms Thursday after two weeks in isolation at The Westin Nova Scotian was a treat for sailors now aboard HMCS Ville de Quebec and HMCS Moncton.

Crews of both warships — 241 sailors in total — were quarantined before setting sail that afternoon in an effort to keep COVID-19 out of their ranks.

“Oh my goodness, I can’t even begin to describe it,” said Cmdr. Michael Eelhart, the skipper of HMCS Ville de Quebec.

“Just hanging out outside in the sun, even though it was a little bit chilly, I’m not the only one who made a big pause before getting on the bus and then back on the ship.”

The quarantine before heading to sea was a unique situation for the navy, said the 24-year navy veteran.

“No one has ever even heard of this,” he said. “Way back in the 1800s they used to quarantine ships regularly if there was sickness on board. But there’s no memory of this every happening to us.”

Reports of U.S. and French aircraft carriers “full of very sick sailors” meant taking all sorts of precautions while getting ready to go to sea, Eelhart said.

“As soon as one person gets sick on board the entire ship is going to be sick, so we took very extreme measures to make sure that there’s certainly no COVID on board the ship,” he said.

“I am very confident that no one in the crew right now has COVID-19. We had a couple of people get tested in the last week and they’ve both come back negative so far.”

If someone does become ill, “hopefully we’ll catch it early. But we’ll segregate them from the rest of the crew and then hopefully get them ashore and get them the support they need. But again, if it’s a large enough group of people then we’ll have to revisit that type of plan.”

Crew about HMCS Ville de Quebec prepare to head out of Halifax harbour to join Operation LASER, the Canadian Armed Forces’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic. - Mona Ghiz / Maritime Forces Atlantic Public Affairs

Even provisions for the crew had to sit in a refrigerated truck for three days before being loaded on board.

“Any interaction with anybody is potential danger for us. The same thing for any type of object that comes on board.”

He’ll have a crew of 201 people aboard as the ship does some training with their air department that runs the ship’s helicopter.

“They’ve got to cycle through to make sure they’re safe to operate and that will take a couple of days.”

The frigate hasn’t been to sea in two months, so after conducting some drills, they’ll be heading off the coast of Nova Scotia.

“After that we’ll settle into a routine where we’ll do some training throughout the day and we’ll come in to near the shoreline to let my people get into cellphone range because FaceTime is super important to them.”

He doesn't know exactly how the ship’s company might be employed to help people during the COVID-19 crisis.

“We’re going to basically sightsee along the South Shore of Nova Scotia and then maybe into the Bay of Fundy, and generally anchor off the coast every night, hopefully with a new location — Digby, Yarmouth, Shelburne, Glace Bay — all these various locations. It’s basically to show the navy’s out there ready to help.”

The crew of HMCS Moncton get ready to leave Halifax to prepare to take part in Operation LASER, the Canadian Armed Forces’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic. - Mona Ghiz / Maritime Forces Atlantic Public Affairs

The navy will wait for requests for assistance from any province or territory, he said.

“There’s certainly a bunch of things that we can do with a naval ship. We are very good to go to coastal communities and support them that way,” Eelhart said. “We do have a helicopter if we need to evacuate anyone. But really they wanted a clean crew in case any potential disaster happened. ”

The ship has medics aboard that could help out with short-term care or first aid, he said. “In addition to that we took a bunch of protective equipment on board.”

It is “entirely a possibility” that the VDQ could be called to help prevent civilian ships carrying COVID-19 cases from coming ashore, he said, noting that could be done with Transport Canada and the RCMP. “We’re going to be the ready duty ship in support of whatever the government needs us to do.”

HMCS Moncton will sail by itself for a few days before the two vessels get together for more training.

“If we get called off to go do a task they would likely only pick one of the two vessels to go do it. There’s a lot of tasks the Moncton could do better than I can certainly if it’s a smaller port that’s more shallow. And there’s a lot of tasks that I can do with a helicopter.”

The Edmonton native has lived in Hammonds Plains with his wife and two sons for five years. “They certainly miss me and I miss them as well.”

His ship needs to be about 10-15 kilometres from shore before the crew can use their mobile phones to call home.

“If the weather’s really bad, we’ll just come into the (Bedford) Basin and hang out there,” said Eelhart, noting the forecast for the next few days is good.

“Apparently there’s snow tonight, which is horrible. But I guess there’s a storm coming through off the coast on Sunday. So they’re looking at four- to six-metre seas, which is very uncomfortable for us, and way more uncomfortable for Moncton.”

Ville de Quebec is supposed to stick around Atlantic Canada.

“But I certainly will go out and conduct training off of Newfoundland, train my officers in navigation, if for no other reason than to prevent the boredom that might affect us.”

The ship is constrained by logistics, including food for the crew and fuel, Eelhart said.

“The general concept here is that we’ll be out for about two weeks and then come alongside for the weekend, either to the ammunition jetty (in Bedford), which we can totally seal off, or at anchor.”

The crew had three days warning before they went into isolation.

“We talk to every single sailor daily — not me, but the team does. And in general, the morale is pretty good. There are some people that the enforced imprisonment in a hotel — as nice as the hotel was — was really hard on them, and we definitely kept track on that. And everyone was super excited to get out of there. So we’re looking forward to going to sea and doing what we do. We’ve made a lot of effort to ensure that going to sea is as fun as possible.”

RELATED: