Hur­ri­cane Beryl has forced sailors and mariners to seek shel­ter in Trinidad.

Yes­ter­day, more than 100 ves­sels fled the up­per Wind­ward Is­lands (East­ern Caribbean) of Bar­ba­dos, St Vin­cent, Grena­da, and even To­ba­go, which are in the path of the Cat­e­go­ry Four hur­ri­cane. They made their way down the 1st Bo­ca to Trinidad to take shel­ter.

Hur­ri­cane Beryl is the ear­li­est Cat­e­go­ry 4 hur­ri­cane on record in the At­lantic Ocean.

As part of its na­tion­al co-or­di­na­tion ef­forts, the Gov­ern­ment, through the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try, no­ti­fied all bor­der agen­cies to pre­pare and en­sure the safe pas­sage of ma­rine ves­sels, in­clud­ing yachts.

Oth­er stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the Ma­rine Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (MSATT), were al­so mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, on his X (pre­vi­ous­ly known as Twit­ter) ac­count, shared a graph­ic show­ing the in­flux of boats head­ing down to Trinidad. He said the Gov­ern­ment was pre­pared to ac­com­mo­date them as they wait­ed out the hur­ri­cane. Out of good­will, T&T’s Gov­ern­ment went as far as even tem­porar­i­ly waiv­ing all cus­toms fees.

Along the fore­shore go­ing in­to Ch­aguara­mas yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, mem­bers of the pub­lic were seen bathing, fish­ing and lim­ing with their friends and fam­i­ly, en­joy­ing the rel­a­tive­ly calm con­di­tions to close the week­end.

Out with his fam­i­ly fish­ing along the coast of Ch­aguara­mas with their pet dog, Vedesh Ram­jat­tan , was not afraid of the im­pend­ing sys­tem and the fact that it was up­grad­ed to a Cat­e­go­ry Four, prompt­ing a trop­i­cal storm watch for Trinidad. The 18-year-old was non­cha­lant and con­fessed that he didn’t rush to do any­thing to pre­pare.

“I didn’t do any ma­jor prepa­ra­tion what­so­ev­er. But I keep up­dat­ed with the Face­book, and it said that (the hur­ri­cane) was not go­ing to ma­jor­ly af­fect Trinidad on the whole, so we didn’t both­er,” Ram­jat­tan said.

Shop­pers at Massy Stores in West­moor­ings wait­ing to cash items al­so showed no signs of pan­ic. Most cus­tomers said they were not buy­ing items in prepa­ra­tion for the bad weath­er.

Mean­while, shop­pers at PriceS­mart at Movi­eTowne, In­vad­er’s Bay, said they were mak­ing their reg­u­lar month-end pur­chas­es.