The family of 55-year-old Phillip Halliday, a Digby, N.S. sailor jailed in Spain, has just arrived home from visiting him in prison overseas.

Halliday's ordeal began in December 2009 when he got a job as a mate on board a decommissioned coast guard ship, The Destiny Empress.

When Spanish authorities found 1,200 kilograms of cocaine worth an estimated $625-million hidden in the hull of the ship they arrested the entire crew.

Halliday denied any knowledge of the drugs but he remains incarcerated in Spain and there has been very little movement in his case.

"It's been 27 months. Nothing has happened," says Halliday's wife, Sheree.

Under Spanish law, an accused person can be held for up to four years without a trial.

"He doesn't look good at all," she says. "Actually, he looks like he's been in a concentration camp. You can count all his ribs. He doesn't look like man I married."

Sheree and her two sons, 26-year-old Cody and 24-year-old Darren left for Madrid last Monday to reunite with the man, whom they hadn't seen in over two-and-a-half years.

The Hallidays say they were happy to see their husband and father, but it was an emotional experience. They say the hardest part was leaving him behind in the foreign prison.

"It was great to see him as well, but…the condition that he was in, that was tough to see," admits Cody Halliday. "That was very difficult. He's not in good shape at all."

The Hallidays have already spent $90,000 on legal fees and they've had to sell the home Phillip built for the family. Nearly 50 people from their hometown of Digby are trying to raise $250,000 to help them out.

"This is about helping a family in our community that we feel is going through an absolute nightmare and is being ruined financially," Peter Dickie of the Halliday Family Support Society.

The Hallidays say they are encouraged by the weekend return of New Brunswick potato farmer, Henk Tepper, who was detained in a Lebanese prison in March 2011 on an arrest warrant alleging he shipped rotten potatoes to Algeria in 2007 and forged export documents.

"I see them as the same because they're innocent, they're in foreign countries and the government has not helped to bring them home," says Sheree.

The difference is Henk Tepper has returned home, but Halliday remains in the Spanish prison, awaiting a trial that could take almost two more years.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Kayla Hounsell