A 6,000-KM Sailing Trip Shows Why Strict Quarantine Is Failing

Coronavirus: Desperate journeys, along with tales of tragedy and separation, are increasingly common as the pandemic wears on.

Stuck in Tahiti with no available flights, Paul Stratfold was running out of time to get back home to Australia and renew his residency visa. The Briton decided his best option was to sail 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) across the southern Pacific Ocean, a solo voyage that took almost a month.

A professional sailor, the 41-year-old had done nothing of this magnitude before. Stratfold's 50-foot yacht was battered by a storm for two days and he slept no more than 40 minutes at a time to reduce the risk of collisions. "It was the only way I could get home," he said in an interview. He reached Southport in Queensland on July 3.

Desperate journeys like this, along with tales of tragedy and separation, are increasingly common as the pandemic wears on, especially where governments persist with hardline quarantines and border controls. Nearly two years into this crisis, tens of thousands of frustrated citizens of nations such as Australia and New Zealand remain stranded overseas, unable to secure flights back to their homelands and one of the few slots allocated for compulsory hotel quarantine.

International passenger flights resume flying into Melbourne from Thursday, with Victoria introducing new hotel quarantine measures. International flights were banned in mid-February after Victoria went into a snap five-day lockdown following a COVID-19 outbreak linked to the Holiday Inn Melbourne Airport hotel, which saw the more virulent UK strain of the virus leak from the quarantine system and into the community.