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OAKLAND — As the Grand Princess finally sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge on Monday, Sandra Cahill, a 79-year-old nurse from Los Altos, let out a deep-throated cheer.
“Hooray! We’re here!” she said from her balcony on the starboard side of the ship. “Thank God we’re here!”
Her relief was momentary. Like many of the 2,500 passengers confined to their rooms for the past several days aboard the coronavirus-infected ship, Cahill felt a new sense of dread settle in — even before the ship docked at the Oakland Port.
One isolation is ending, but another unfamiliar one is just beginning. By Tuesday, most of the passengers will be taken off the ship and sent to one of four military bases across the country to begin a 14-day quarantine. But who goes where and when remains uncertain.
“I feel like I’m on Alcatraz,” Cahill said in an interview with this news organization shortly after the ship sailed past the notorious island. “We’re cooped up like prisoners.”
What was supposed to be a 15-day luxury cruise to Hawaii became a claustrophobic curse over the past four days as 19 crew members and two passengers tested positive last week for coronavirus. The voyage was supposed to end Saturday, but the ship sailed in circles for days off the coast of San Francisco until plans were put in place for Monday’s docking.
Officials have said crew members who are not sick will be kept aboard when the ship departs Oakland for an unknown destination. That’s an unnerving prospect for some of the 1,100 crew members — many from the Philippines. Most share a room with a bunk bed, a crew member told this news organization Monday, and some healthy crew members are rooming with sick ones.
“The U.S. authorities haven’t mentioned our well-being except to say we might be floated off back into the ocean,” said the crew member who asked not to be identified for fear he could lose his job. “If the passengers leave and we’re left behind, it’ll be horrible. If I don’t get to go home after this, I will feel trapped, miserable and scared.”
Conditions had been deteriorating on the boat over the past several days, with passengers receiving cold eggs and rock-hard French Toast and no coffee often until 2 p.m. Trying to get through to a steward on a phone line could mean waiting on hold for four hours, passengers say. Getting a roll of toilet paper or tube of toothpaste could take a day.
Stateroom balconies were the only outlet for fresh air and freedom — for passengers lucky enough to have them. On a night when many passengers stepped outside to enjoy the sunset, the balconies became platforms of raucous dissent. On Friday, when President Trump said he wanted the Grand Princess to stay offshore because “I don’t need to have the numbers double” of coronavirus cases in the U.S., shouting matches were waged from one balcony to the next.
Separated by partitions on each side, the angry passengers couldn’t see each other. But Asha Burgess could hear them — a woman from the 12th deck above her, a couple down below, and another man to the left.
“There was a lady from Kentucky yelling about how she supported the president and it’s not his fault. And someone else yelled, ‘He said ‘no, leave us on the boat.’ Do you want to be stuck on the boat?’ Then another guy said, ‘If you want to blame someone, blame the Chinese,’ ” Burgess said. “It got a little crazy outside.”
Burgess, 26, is an opera singer from Houston who has tried to release the growing tensions aboard by standing on her balcony and singing a Puccini aria to the sea — the one from “Turandot” just before the slave girl stabs herself.
“I feel a bit of empathy with her,” said Burgess, 26. “I just want to get off the boat.”
The entire experience has been humbling, she said. One of the most distressing parts, she said, has been the messages she received through her Instagram page from relatives of crew members asking her to check on their conditions.
“One kid’s dad is a bartender, so I called room service and said ‘Hey, do you know this person, can you confirm they’re OK?’ ” Burgess said. “He was fine, not feeling symptoms, but the fact that he couldn’t get in touch with his own dad is heartbreaking.”
As the ship sailed through the Golden Gate on Monday, Burgess and her boyfriend walked out onto the balcony again — this time to cheers.
“Finally, we can move on to whatever is next,” said Kristian Riese, a pilot living in Guam, “yet I have reservations about what’s to come.”
Putting their lives on hold for another two weeks will be a struggle for many passengers who will have to cancel work, lose paychecks and arrange extended care for loved ones at home.
The experience has left Cahill, the pediatric nurse who works at Valley Medical Center in San Jose, “feeling weak. I’m feeling tired. I’m not getting any exercise, and not eating proper food has taken a toll on my health.”
She needs to get back home soon, she said. Her husband has been in hospice for the past year with heart failure and severe dementia. She allowed herself this two-week vacation with her five cousins as a respite but promised to quickly return to care for him.
“If things go wrong with him, they’re going to have to let me go,” Cahill said. “He can’t pass with me in quarantine.”
This trip was supposed to be a restorative two-week break for Cahill. Now it will stretch to at least a month.
“It’s been a real ordeal, I tell you,” she said. “It’s been really tough.”
