Rose­marie Sant

Just un­der two weeks af­ter its first com­mer­cial sail­ing to To­ba­go, the Galleons Pas­sage ex­pe­ri­enced me­chan­i­cal prob­lems three hours in­to its jour­ney from Port- of- Spain to the Port of Scar­bor­ough To­ba­go this morn­ing.

The ves­sel, which had al­ready set sail for To­ba­go, stopped for 15 min­utes to al­low the en­gi­neer­ing crew on board to con­duct pre­lim­i­nary checks.

The ves­sel’s speed was al­so slowed down to 15 knots and as a re­sult the trip to To­ba­go, which has so far been com­plet­ed in just un­der four- and- a- half hours, was es­ti­mat­ed to take six hours with an es­ti­mat­ed ar­rival to To­ba­go of 12.30 pm.

In a brief state­ment Nid­co con­firmed the de­lay af­ter an “alert was seen on the bridge.”

Nid­co said the ves­sel was stopped for 15 min­utes to al­low the en­gi­neer­ing crew to con­duct pre­lim­i­nary checks on the source of the alert.

Those checks were done be­tween 9.15 am and 9.30 am.

The com­pa­ny said once the checks were com­plet­ed the ves­sel re­sumed sail­ing at a re­duced speed of 15 knots and the es­ti­mat­ed ar­rival time to To­ba­go would have been at 12.30pm on what is on­ly its 13th sail­ing to To­ba­go.

Port chair­man Lyle Alexan­der said while he had been told the ves­sel ex­pe­ri­enced me­chan­i­cal prob­lems it was yet to be de­ter­mined what hap­pened.

Nei­ther Alexan­der nor Nid­co were in a po­si­tion to con­firm whether the ves­sel will make the re­turn sail­ing this af­ter­noon.