Two Ukrainian men have been jailed for attempting to smuggle eight Eastern Europeans into Canada on a sailboat that stopped en-route in Bermuda.

Mykola Tyshkivskyy, 46, was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for human smuggling, while Vasyl Aksenin, 27, was given a 15-month sentence for misrepresenting or withholding information. The pair pleaded guilty on Wednesday in Halifax provincial court, Canada, according to a report in Halifax's Chronicle Herald newspaper. They were arrested on June 19 after a 13-metre sailboat, the Valletta, was intercepted near Shelburne, Nova Scotia, by Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canada Border Services Agency.

Tyshkivskyy was captain of the vessel and Aksenin was the skipper. Aksenin claimed the eight other people on the boat were crew members on a training cruise, but the authorities quickly determined that the passengers were trying to enter Canada illegally.

Crown attorney Paula Taylor told the court the passengers were from the eastern European nations of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova and that five of them had been denied visas to travel to Canada.

Each passenger had paid a man in Kiev named Igor between $6,000 and $12,000 to be smuggled into Canada on a vessel. They boarded the Valletta in Antigua, leaving the Caribbean country on May 27 and mooring in Bermuda from June 6 to June 11.

The boat radioed the coast guard for a weather forecast on June 17, saying it was having mechanical problems in heavy seas about 500 kilometres southeast of Boston.

An aircraft was dispatched to check on the vessel, only to be told it had regained power and was making its way to Halifax for repairs.

Two days later, the Valletta was observed in Shelburne Harbour and ordered to dock at a wharf for inspection.

"It was a harrowing voyage, a difficult voyage that many of the passengers felt themselves lucky to survive," Ms Taylor said of the trip from Antigua to Nova Scotia. "It ended with the passengers all making claims for refugee status in Canada."

According to a Bermuda Maritime Operations spokesman, the vessel arrived in Bermuda from Antigua on June 6 with ten people on board. It left on June 11 for Nova Scotia with the same number of passengers.

The spokesman said the vessel cleared customs in St. George's and moored in Convict Bay, attracting "some interest from the Marine Police" during its stay.

Commenting on the case yesterday, Chief Immigration Officer Rozy Azhar said: "While yachts may be allowed in Bermuda to obtain supplies or make repairs, in this case, the passengers and crew on the boat were visa-controlled nationals and were not allowed to land as they did not have the required Bermuda entry visas."

She explained: "The clearing of the boat is not the same as the clearing of the people.

"While there are humanitarian reasons for clearing a boat and allowing them to restock supplies or make repairs, this does not mean that the persons are allowed to land in Bermuda."