In the early days of the Coronavirus shutdown, a lot of attention was focused on cruise ship passengers stuck onboard ships for weeks at a time. All of the passengers have since been allowed to go home, but it's a different story for thousands of cruise ship employees on dozens of ships who remain stranded by strict CDC guidelines. Frank DiLella talked to one New York City-based actor, Dan Domenech, stuck aboard a cruise ship off Florida.

"I never thought when I took this contract that our own country wouldn't let us back in. But here we are,” Domenech said.

Domenech is a Broadway veteran who has performed all over the country. His latest job had him performing on the high seas.

“I'm on a Princess Cruise line right now. We're on the Sky Princess and I was brought out here to be a singer.  We were rehearsing in Los Angeles back in February, and at the end of February we came out here to embark onto the ship and start our contract. We got through one performance of one of the shows and two performances of the second show and then everything started going down and we haven't worked since,” said Domenech.

In an attempt to stop the spread of COVID-19 all passengers were forced to disembark the Sky Princess at the beginning of March while Dan and 1,300 other crew members remained on board. On March 14th the CDC issued a month long “no sail order,” and a few weeks later the order was revised to prohibit cruising until July 24th and ban crew members from disembarking on American soil. Domenech posted a cry for help on his Instagram account via social media.

"This call to action right now came from, we've had multiple meetings now for days in a row and every time you go down to that meeting you see these people that you've been spending all day with, and you can see it in their eyes. You can hear it in their voices that they're getting worried, that some people are getting scared and some people are ready to get off the ship. So we had a meeting this morning with the officers on board and they were letting us know that the CDC wasn't letting us off the boat. It seems a little ridiculous. We’ve been complying. Everyone is healthy,” said Domenech.

According to Domenech, Princess Cruise Lines has exhausted all of their options to try and get the United States Coast Guard to let their American crew members off of the ship. As a result they’ve asked crew members to raise awareness any way they can.

"Right now it's been about 40 days since the last time we touched land. Right now we're in Port Everglades,” Domenech said, happy he can least see land, even if he’s not able to touch it.  "When we're not here we're anchored in the middle of the ocean 20 miles from any land. You can see the other ships."

When asked what the first thing he’s going to do once he finally gets back to New York: "Get a slice of pizza and a cup of coffee,” said Domenech.