What do you do if it's the middle of a pandemic and you're feeling cooped up in Canada, where government lockdowns have been imposed in many areas?

Billionaire Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk and his girlfriend thought they had an answer, according to recently filed lawsuits obtained by CBC News: charter a $500,000-a-week superyacht in the Bahamas to spend the Christmas holiday with friends and family.

The 12-passenger, 60-metre M/Y Dream boasts on its website of "a Zen interior of sophistication and comfortable elegance" and promises "a warm and congenial nautical experience."

But two of Melnyk's guests allege they got anything but, with the Caribbean excursion devolving into a clash of egos between the NHL owner and the yacht's British captain, "panic attacks" and "abuse" — and now, litigation demanding $10 million US.

The yacht voyage began Dec. 22, when Melnyk, 61, and girlfriend Sharilyne Anderson set sail on the Dream from Nassau, intending to spend the first five days together before friends and family joined after Christmas.

From the start, it appears, they didn't hit it off well with the superyacht's captain.

He was "an odorous, ill-tempered man who was curt and dismissive with the guests and outright angry and abusive to the crew," claim the two lawsuits, filed in the United States last month by Anderson and another plaintiff. The captain "was easily flustered and overwhelmed and seemed completely unfamiliar with the area, the crew or the vessel."