With the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing how the MV Blue Wave Har­mo­ny was dam­aged dur­ing a sea tri­al yet to be thor­ough­ly in­ter­ro­gat­ed, To­ba­go busi­ness­es and ser­vice providers find them­selves in a sit­u­a­tion where they could be with­out prop­er car­go ser­vices for a pro­longed pe­ri­od.

This means that To­bag­o­ni­ans, in the very short term, may face the re­al­i­ty of a lack of ac­cess to cru­cial food sup­plies, con­struc­tion ma­te­ri­als, fu­el-re­lat­ed in­puts, re­tail stock and oth­er com­mer­cial car­go.

Chair­man of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the T&T Cham­ber of Com­merce, Cur­tis Williams, has al­ready alert­ed cit­i­zens to the fact that busi­ness­es on the is­land are fac­ing acute short­ages due to the Blue Wave’s in­abil­i­ty to start ser­vice. The T&T Spir­it be­ing out of ser­vice with a me­chan­i­cal is­sue has com­pound­ed the is­sue, a sit­u­a­tion which has prompt­ed Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine to beg cit­i­zens for pa­tience, since there is a void on the in­ter-is­land route.

This is be­cause the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny, which ar­rived here on Jan­u­ary 22 to re­place the out­go­ing MV Cabo Star, of­fered en­hanced car­go op­tions over its pre­de­ces­sor. Ac­cord­ing to NID­CO, which was in­volved in the process to pro­cure the ves­sel, it of­fered en­hanced car­go ca­pac­i­ty. In par­tic­u­lar, it can ac­com­mo­date ap­prox­i­mate­ly 125 freight units (com­pared to the 90-trail­er ca­pac­i­ty of the Cabo Star), has en­hanced re­frig­er­at­ed car­go ca­pa­bil­i­ty, heav­ier-du­ty load­ing ramps for the car­riage of heavy equip­ment, bulk car­go and spe­cialised loads, and the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of trans­port­ing dan­ger­ous and spe­cialised car­go. This af­fords hauliers and truck­ers the abil­i­ty to move more car­go be­tween the is­lands than pre­vi­ous­ly - a prospect they were look­ing for­ward to.

The ves­sel was un­der­go­ing sea tri­als as part of its en­try in­to ser­vice when the ac­ci­dent oc­curred at the Port of Scar­bor­ough on Jan­u­ary 30. Ac­cord­ing to the T&T In­ter-Is­land Trans­porta­tion Com­pa­ny, the ves­sel re­turned to Trinidad yes­ter­day for com­ple­tion of re­pairs. How­ev­er, even at the end of this process, an in­spec­tion and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process will need to be con­duct­ed by a tech­ni­cal team to de­ter­mine whether the ves­sel is wor­thy to re­turn to the sea. Video of the dam­age to the hull, though, sug­gests that the re­pair work may be ex­ten­sive, which is to say it may not pass the grade of the rel­e­vant in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies that cer­ti­fy the sea­wor­thi­ness of such ves­sels. This sug­gests that the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go may well need to find an al­ter­na­tive in the in­ter­im, since their ini­tial sug­ges­tion that the ves­sel could re­turn to ser­vice by the week­end may not ma­te­ri­alise. As a ref­er­ence, when the Cabo Star ar­rived here in 2017, it took just over a week be­fore it ac­tu­al­ly start­ed reg­u­lar ser­vice af­ter un­der­go­ing in­spec­tions, prepa­ra­tions and test runs.

Pan Trin­ba­go’s Na­tion­al Panora­ma medi­um band fi­nal has al­ready been a ca­su­al­ty of the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny’s ab­sence from the seabridge. As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Bev­er­ly Ram­sey-Moore yes­ter­day re­vealed they shift­ed the Na­tion­al Panora­ma medi­um band fi­nal from To­ba­go back to Trinidad be­cause of the steel­bands’ in­abil­i­ty to trans­port equip­ment be­tween the is­lands for Sun­day’s event.

Trans­porta­tion of es­sen­tial goods to To­ba­go re­mains crit­i­cal to the is­land’s over­all econ­o­my. It is, there­fore, crit­i­cal that Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jear­lean John fa­cil­i­tates the quick re­turn of the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny to en­sure the short­ages that af­fect­ed the is­land in 2023, when the Cabo Star was out of ser­vice for al­most a month fol­low­ing a fire, do not re­cur.