Whim to voyage: a New Year’s decision ends in six months at sea amid Covid lockdown

On New Year’s Eve 2019, Giulia Baccosi, then 31, accepted a job as a ship’s cook aboard a cargo schooner carrying rum and olive oil from Europe to Central America after a friend’s message piqued her interest. She had just left a job in Sicily and was unsure about the path ahead. “My heart was telling me maybe I should reconsider,” she later recalled. She told the ship’s owner, “I’ll come with you to Mexico, and then I’ll leave,” intending to return home after roughly three months. Instead, she embarked on a voyage that would stretch into a six-month odyssey at sea.

The Avontuur, a 100-year-old schooner, set sail in early January from Germany toward the North Sea, with Giulia preparing three meals a day for a crew of 15 and managing provisions. The first port of call was Santa Cruz de Tenerife, and as the ship approached, the crew could hear distant drums from the city’s carnival. After 36 days at sea, the sailors and cooks were eager to set foot ashore and joined the celebration for a few hours before resuming their voyage.

The next morning, long before the global pandemic had become a household term for many, a rumor had reached the deck about holidaymakers on Gran Canaria who had fallen ill with a mystery virus and were quarantined in a hotel. The crew pressed on, but their routine would soon be interrupted in a far more profound way. While 45 nautical miles off Gran Canaria, the night watch spotted an unusual light on the horizon. The Avontuur dropped sails and fired up the engine, and what emerged was a small wooden fishing vessel carrying 16 migrants—five women and 11 men—packed so tightly they could barely stand. They had been adrift for more than 10 days, out of water, fuel and food. The migrants were brought aboard, fed, treated, and given medical attention while coastguards were alerted because the ship could not accommodate all of them. “They are waving,” Giulia recalled, “from a distance we can hear them shouting.” The crew offered what help they could, but there were no heroes in their diary; only a commitment to do what was right in a perilous situation. The coastguard eventually took control of the rescued migrants as the Avontuur continued its Atlantic crossing.

Days later, the Avontuur’s captain read an email from the ship’s owner that would change everything: “The world as you know it no longer exists. Ports are closing, airports are closing, flights are cancelled. Supermarkets, shops, borders—everything has shut.” The crew, suddenly cut off from their lives back home, found their only regular contact with the outside world in a single daily satellite email to headquarters in Germany. Phone signal was still a six-day journey away. The group pressed on toward the Caribbean, uncertain whether they would ever dock again. Giulia clung to a thread of communication with loved ones, a lifeline she would come to realize was as fragile as the sea itself.

Approaching Guadeloupe, the port authorities asked the Avontuur to depart as soon as possible, and the crew faced the possibility of extended confinement at sea with no shore leave on the horizon. The ship’s cargoes and supplies came to be their only constants as weeks turned into months, and the long game of beacons and satellite emails eclipsed the routine of loading and unloading. The crew were forced to reckon with the reality that any planned homecoming—Giulia’s own return to Mexico or Italy—could be impossible in a world shutting down around them. The sense of isolation intensified as days turned into weeks at sea, far from family and friends. The only human contact they truly received came through the occasional update from their German headquarters and the limited communications they could muster from small satellites that chimed in each day.

To cope with the monotony and anxiety of a life aboard a floating bubble, Giulia and the crew filled their days with crafts, drawing, and music. They rigged a cargo net so they could swim safely off the stern, and some formed intimate connections of a different sort as human needs found expression in rare moments of closeness. They marveled at the ocean’s creatures—the dolphins and flying fish—and one night encountered a pod of minke whales moving through bioluminescent water, a moment Giulia described as both “magnificent” and “farting” in scent and sound. The ship’s rhythm adapted to the constraints of lockdown, and the crew learned to improvise when needed.

A storm warning added urgency to the voyage: the Avontuur maneuvered north toward Newfoundland to ride out a hurricane-threatened system. As supplies dwindled, the crew faced hard choices about provisioning. Coffee—“the one thing that propels a sailor”—was rationed, and fresh food ran low. Giulia helped improvise a fireless slow cooker from a wooden box, expanding foam, and a yoga mat, and the result yielded one of the best stews she ever cooked. The crew’s resilience grew from necessity, and they learned to prize small victories as they navigated the pandemic’s early, uncertain phase. In June 2020, the Avontuur finally made landfall in Horta, in the Azores, and the crew, all EU citizens, were required to test for Covid before disembarking. After four and a half months at sea, the call finally came to allow them to step ashore. Giulia described the moment as one she would never forget: the chance to walk on land, to hear the sound of grass, to feel “the flowers, the bar, the people,” and to choose a path back toward Europe.

Days later, the journey’s final leg began to wind toward its conclusion. The Avontuur headed home to Hamburg, and in late July the ship’s 15 sailors docked after 188 days at sea. They unloaded 64 tonnes of olive oil, coffee, cacao, and rum that had accompanied them from the Caribbean. The homecoming was celebrated with a T‑shirt bearing the words, “The world as you know it no longer exists,” a reminder of how much had changed. Giulia, wiser for the experience, said she felt “not the same as before,” and wondered how she would fit into her old life again.

Five years on, Giulia remains drawn to the sea. She is aboard another vessel, somewhere off Greenland, and the memory of that six‑month voyage continues to shape her choices. Each New Year’s Eve, she looks up at the sky and asks the universe for a sign that she is on the right path, a quiet ritual that began in 2019 and continues to guide her through life at sea.