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Wednesday, July 9, 2025

Last-minute rush to send goods to To­ba­go

Cabo Star goes on dry dock

by

Gail Alexander
2483 days ago
20180921
The  Cabo Star

The Cabo Star

ABRAHAM DIAZ

The To­ba­go sea bridge’s Cabo Star car­go ves­sel went in­to sched­uled dry dock­ing yes­ter­day af­ter a large last minute rush by busi­ness­peo­ple to send trucks to the sis­ter isle in re­cent days. This, since no al­ter­na­tive car­go ves­sel will be in place dur­ing the ves­sel’s dry dock­ing.

Port Au­thor­i­ty CEO Vil­ma Lewis-Cock­burn spoke about the sit­u­a­tion around 4 pm yes­ter­day, just as the Cabo Star left Port- of-Spain to head for the Cari­doc fa­cil­i­ty in Ch­aguara­mas. It will un­der­go sched­uled dry dock­ing scruti­ny for the next 10 days un­til Sep­tem­ber 30.

Lewis-Cock­burn said, “Last month, we ad­vised stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing truck­ers that pri­or to the dry dock­ing, the Port would put on four ad­di­tion­al sail­ings on Sat­ur­days so peo­ple can send across ex­tra goods to stock up enough sup­plies dur­ing the 10 days the ves­sel would be on dry dock.

“How­ev­er dur­ing those ad­di­tion­al sail­ings we had very low fig­ures re­spond­ing to use the sail­ings. We had 25 trucks, one Sat­ur­day, 37, an­oth­er week­end and 59 al­so—it was re­al­ly un­der­utilised.

“But in the last few days be­fore the ves­sel went on dry dock, we got a ‘mil­lion’ trucks lin­ing up to go across—last minute rush. There were so many the ves­sel left late from To­ba­go and Port-of-Spain. I still have peo­ple call­ing to get things sent across, but when we had the ad­di­tion­al ser­vice, they didn’t use it—we gave every­one am­ple op­por­tu­ni­ty to or­gan­ise.”

Since no al­ter­na­tive car­go ves­sel is be­ing pro­vid­ed dur­ing Cabo Star’s ab­sence, per­ish­able and light trucks will be trans­port­ed to To­ba­go on the dai­ly sail­ing of the T&T Spir­it. But heavy items such as bricks and like­wise would not be trans­port­ed, she added.

The To­ba­go Cham­ber is keep­ing an eye peeled on the seabridge’s car­go op­er­a­tion in the Cabo Star ab­sence.

Cham­ber vice chair­man Mar­tin George said, “We re­main tremen­dous­ly con­cerned there’s no pro­vi­sion for an al­ter­na­tive car­go ser­vice es­pe­cial­ly with the up­com­ing long Re­pub­lic day hol­i­day week­end and the im­pact the lack of a car­go ves­sel will have on To­ba­go, its busi­ness­peo­ple, hol­i­day mak­ers and oth­ers.”

Not­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s at­tempts to se­cure four ves­sels for the seabridge, Galleon’s Pas­sage, a leased re­place­ment for the T&T Ex­press and two Aus­tralian fer­ries ahead, George added.

“De­spite the mul­ti­tude of promis­es, as­sur­ance and at­tempts to as­sauge the trav­el­ling pub­lic, the re­al­i­ty is that as yet, there’s no con­sis­tent, re­li­able, ad­e­quate ser­vice to meet the needs of peo­ple wish­ing to trans­port goods and ve­hi­cles. We’re days away from the 2019 Bud­get and this al­ba­tross re­mains around the na­tion’s neck.”


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