Sathia Rajaratnam travelled all the way to Indonesia to try to talk her adult son into leaving the confines of a wooden boat he has been camped out on for more than 50 days along with 246 fellow Tamil asylum seekers.

But after spending more than a week overseas, the Vancouver businesswoman is returning home knowing that her 27-year-old son, Sanjeev Kuhendrarajah, and his shipmates, will be staying where they are.

"They are still in the boat and they are going to stay there for some more time," Rajaratnam told CTV.ca in a telephone interview from Merak, Indonesia, about 120 kilometres west of Jakarta.

Nearly two months ago, the refugees sailed from Sri Lanka in hopes of reaching Australia, but their plan was thwarted when Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd personally telephoned Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and asked him to stop them.

Since then, most of the Tamils have refused to leave the wooden ship they arrived on, which has been held at the port of Merak since mid-October.

In a separate interview with The Associated Press, Sathia Rajaratnam said she came to Indonesia hoping to end the lengthy stalemate, and attended meetings with officials from the Indonesian government, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Canadian Embassy. But she was unable to broker a deal for her son.

"I'm very sad and very upset, but there's nothing we can do," Rajaratnam said.

"If someone guaranteed them that they are allowed to access communication tools and live in a decent place, then they will consider that, but no one will" give such guarantees, she added.

Merak immigration official Harry Purwanto said that the local detention centre was full, but the government would confine them to rented accommodation if they left the boat.

"We won't force them to leave," Purwanto said.

Rajaratnam's son has acted as the spokesperson for the people on the boat, negotiating with authorities and fielding media inquiries about the situation on a cellular phone he was given by the Indonesian navy.

But eventually, Kuhendrarajah's troubled past was exposed in the media -- that he moved to Canada as a young boy, became involved with a Tamil gang in Toronto, served a prison sentence and was deported from the country where his mother and brother still live, in April 2003.

In an interview last month, Kuhendrarajah admitted he had "a bad history" that has clouded his future.

"I've ruined my life," he told CTV.ca in November. "I've paid my price for it, and I need a second chance."

At the moment, Kuhendrarajah says the asylum seekers will not accept a deal to leave the boat.

"The Indonesian government is not trustworthy," Kuhendrarajah told AP by phone.

Still, the conditions on the boat are becoming more stressful.

Sathia Rajaratnam said at least two infants are running a high fever on board the boat and a senior citizen has experienced dizzy spells when standing upright.

Inside the boat "you can smell a very strong smell and I don't know how those people are living there," Rajaratnam told CTV.ca.

Then there was a late-night incident that awoke the people on the boat in the early hours of Thursday morning, which Sanjeev Kuhendrarajah described to CTV.ca in a brief telephone interview.

Kuhendrarajah said some unidentified people in "small black rubber boats" circled the wooden ship and attempted to put "a bag" on board. But he and his fellow asylum seekers could not identify who the people were or who the boats belonged to.

An Indonesian military spokesperson told The Australian newspaper that the boats were part of a special forces training exercise that "has nothing to do" with the Sri Lankan asylum seekers.

"This is just routine training," Air Vice-Marshal Sagoem Tamboen told The Australian.

The people on board the boat remain shaken.

"We are very concerned," Kuhendrarajah said.

With files from The Associated Press