KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The fam­i­lies of two south Trinidad fish­er­men re­main anx­ious­ly await­ing news as re­gion­al search ef­forts con­tin­ue for the men who dis­ap­peared while de­liv­er­ing the fish­ing pirogue Kam­pai to St Vin­cent and the Grenadines ear­li­er this month.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Kim­ber­ly Dy­er said there has been no up­date on the fate of her hus­band, Alvin Mor­gan, who re­mains miss­ing at sea.

Dy­er said she re­port­ed Mor­gan miss­ing at the San­ta Flo­ra Po­lice Sta­tion on Wednes­day, but au­thor­i­ties have not pro­vid­ed any new in­for­ma­tion to the fam­i­ly.

“They came yes­ter­day but they say they haven’t got­ten any word from over­seas au­thor­i­ties,” she said.

Mor­gan, 48, is the fa­ther of two chil­dren, aged 17 and 18. His sud­den dis­ap­pear­ance has left rel­a­tives strug­gling to cope.

“We just sit­ting down here wait­ing for a word or some good news. It is re­al­ly hard,” Dy­er said.

She ex­plained that al­though Mor­gan had been a fish­er­man for sev­er­al years, he had nev­er pre­vi­ous­ly tak­en on the job of de­liv­er­ing a ves­sel to an­oth­er coun­try.

“I told him I don’t want you to go. Why you go­ing? Let some­one else go. I was wor­ried about it,” she said.

Dy­er said Mor­gan promised to call once he ar­rived at his des­ti­na­tion, but the call nev­er came.

“He did not say when they would come back. He said when he reach he would call and that was it. He nev­er called. Mon­day I was wait­ing all night. I stayed up af­ter two and three in the morn­ing and I nev­er got that call.”

Mor­gan and fel­low San­ta Flo­ra res­i­dent Damien Re­ece were tasked with pi­lot­ing the pirogue to Union Is­land, where it was to be hand­ed over and reg­is­tered.

Ac­cord­ing to a me­dia re­lease is­sued on Wednes­day by the Coast Guard, the over­due 29-foot fish­ing pirogue de­part­ed Buc­coo, To­ba­go, at about 1.30 pm on March 2 bound for Union Is­land. The Coast Guard said the ves­sel nev­er ar­rived at its in­tend­ed des­ti­na­tion.

“Re­gion­al co­or­di­na­tion is on­go­ing be­tween the Coast Guards of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Grena­da and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines,” the re­lease stat­ed, adding that aer­i­al pa­trols have al­so been con­duct­ed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Air Guard.

Up to the time of the re­lease, there had been no sight­ings of the ves­sel or its crew.

An Ur­gent Ma­rine In­for­ma­tion Broad­cast is­sued through North Post Ra­dio re­mains ac­tive, ad­vis­ing mariners in the re­gion to re­main vig­i­lant and re­port any sight­ings or in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to the miss­ing ves­sel.

Sources fa­mil­iar with the arrange­ment said the pirogue had been built by a Trinidad boat man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny for a British na­tion­al who in­tend­ed to use it for fish­ing op­er­a­tions in St Vin­cent.

The ves­sel was re­port­ed­ly col­lect­ed on March 1, and one of its en­gines ex­pe­ri­enced me­chan­i­cal is­sues dur­ing test­ing but was lat­er re­paired.

An­oth­er boat was ex­pect­ed to ac­com­pa­ny the men for the re­turn trip.

How­ev­er, peo­ple wait­ing in Union Is­land said the ves­sel nev­er ar­rived, and at­tempts to con­tact the crew went unan­swered. Cap­tain Val­lence Ramb­harat, of the Hunters Search and Res­cue Team ,said in­de­pen­dent search ef­forts are al­so on­go­ing.

“Our To­ba­go team mem­ber, Kester Jer­ry, used his boat to move from King Pe­ter Bay and did a loop head­ing north be­fore turn­ing right in­to Par­latu­vi­er,” Ramb­harat said.

With no con­firmed sight­ings, fam­i­lies and search teams hope for a break­through in the search for the miss­ing fish­er­men.