What was sup­posed to be a smooth ride on the Buc­coo Reef fer­ry from the Scar­bor­ough port to the port of Port-of -Spain on Sun­day turned out to be an event­ful one. 

This was due to on­ly one en­gine op­er­at­ing, which caused the fer­ry to be cir­cling in Ch­aguara­mas wa­ters since 5 pm. A pas­sen­ger told Guardian Me­dia that they left Scar­bor­ough Port at 3 pm. At 5 pm, the ves­sel of­fi­cials an­nounced that a tech­ni­cal is­sue arose, which sent pas­sen­gers on board in­to pan­ic. 

Short­ly be­fore sev­en, the of­fi­cials then up­dat­ed the pas­sen­gers that the ves­sel would even­tu­al­ly dock at 7:30 pm. 

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (NID­CO) chair­man Her­bert George, who said the elec­tron­ic bridge con­trol went down on the fer­ry and the tech­ni­cians on board had trou­ble. They even­tu­al­ly found the prob­lem. George said the ves­sel was then able to dock. He as­sured that the ves­sel would sail to­day at its sched­uled time, and there was no lin­ger­ing is­sue.

Both Buc­co Reef and APT James fall un­der the re­mit of NID­CO.

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to Port Au­thor­i­ty Chair­man Lyle Alexan­der, who said they were in­formed about the is­sue. The au­thor­i­ty as­sist­ed by or­gan­is­ing tug ser­vices for the ves­sel to dock safe­ly. —An­drea Perez-Sobers