TORONTO -- After being on board for as long as two months, a handful of Canadian crew members aboard Holland America’s MS Koningsdam disembarked at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro, California on Friday while another group aboard the Emerald Princess is hoping to do the same on Saturday at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

In an email statement to CTVNews.ca, Princess Cruises said that up to 19 Canadians and 29 Americans disembarked in a joint repatriation effort with Holland American Line and Seabourn Cruise Line and in co-ordination with the U.S. Coast Guard and government agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others. Crew members were on their way home via transportation arranged by the company, it said.

On Saturday, 53 Canadians and 70 Americans are scheduled to leave the Emerald Princess, with Canadian citizens set to fly back by chartered air from Miami, said the company.

“We remain deeply committed to and focused on reuniting our shipboard team members with their families safely and continue to make progress with arranging their travel to return to their home countries,” Princess Cruises said.

Members aboard the Emerald had been previously denied entry in Miami and were set to disembark earlier this week in Nassau, Bahamas, when they were turned away at the last minute, even though a flight chartered by the Canadian government was ready to take them home.

Multiple sources had told CTVNews.ca in recent days that cruise ships were even having difficulty repatriating citizens at ports of their own countries. Many crew members on various vessels have not set foot on land for some two months, spending much of their day cooped up inside small cabins due to physical distancing measures in place. And with ships unable to dock regularly to get provisions, supplies have also been more limited.

Some 240 other Canadians across some 90 cruise ships are still waiting to get home, as vessels carrying tens of thousands of crew members try to co-ordinate with governments to allow them to dock. A spokesperson for Carnival Corporation, which owns Princess Cruises, said on Wednesday that it was working to repatriate some 26,000 team members in the coming weeks.