A Quebec woman who was thought to be lost at sea for almost a month off Chile while on a paid sailing excursion says the experience has soured her on sailing.

"It wasn't what I had signed up for. I was really looking forward (to it) because I love sailing, I was looking forward to a beautiful experience where I could learn how to sail, but it didn't turn out that way," Josée "Jade" Chabot told CTV's Canada AM. "It actually took away my passion for sailing. For me, it was not a good experience."

Chabot and four other experienced crew members set sail from Ecuador on Jan. 16 aboard a 13-metre sloop. They had paid $3,500 for a 45-day trip into the Pacific to earn their skipper licences.

Their boat was due to dock in Coquimbo, Chile, around Feb. 27 and Chabot planned to fly home March 16. However, an 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck Chile on Feb. 26, causing a tsunami.

The sailboat was tossed around by several storms, before eventually getting stuck in a dead calm between Chile and Ecuador.

The captain of the ship, Boguslaw (Bob) Norwid, refused to allow crew to radio home to say they were delayed, because he was philosophically opposed to using the radio.

When the boat did not dock when it was supposed to, Chabot's husband, Martin Neufeld, began to fear the worst. A search by authorities found nothing, and the boat was presumed lost at sea.

Then, almost six weeks after it was supposed to dock, Chabot's boat quietly arrived in Coquimbo.

Neufeld has said he was both angry and joyful after the reunion with his wife.

"It's really been a time of just assimilating emotions as well as going through a rollercoaster of emotion as well," he told Canada AM. "And just being close, finding quiet time and just letting all that settle, with all of the media attention, just to relax, to be together because it's been a while.

"It's been a beautiful moment. We are shifting our attention from the event . . . to starting to look at things we are going to do in the future."