The lat­est fer­ry in the na­tion­al fleet, the Buc­coo Reef, re­port­ed­ly has en­coun­tered a few chal­lenges on her jour­ney home to Trinidad and To­ba­go, ac­cord­ing to a state­ment is­sued to­day by NID­CO, the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed.

NID­CO is re­port­ing in its re­lease that alarms on the ves­sel were trig­gered some 398 nau­ti­cal miles from Ho­bart, Tas­ma­nia, Aus­tralia, the man­u­fac­tur­ing hub. 

“While the tech­ni­cal as­sess­ment con­clud­ed that the jour­ney could have con­tin­ued, NID­CO de­cid­ed that the ves­sel should re­turn to Ho­bart—it be­ing the clos­est port of call—to in­ves­ti­gate these oc­cur­rences and take the nec­es­sary cor­rec­tive ac­tion to pre­vent their re­cur­rence,” NID­CO’s re­lease states.

It added: “The builder, IN­CAT Tas­ma­nia Pty Ltd, along with the orig­i­nal en­gi­neer­ing equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers are trou­bleshoot­ing and re­solv­ing the as­so­ci­at­ed is­sues.  NID­CO has re­quest­ed a test of ma­jor sys­tems up­on com­ple­tion of these ac­tiv­i­ties be­fore the ves­sel re­sumes its jour­ney to Trinidad.”

The Buc­coo Reef had left Ho­bart on Thurs­day 21 Jan­u­ary 2021, to be­gin its jour­ney home to T&T of some 9,266 nau­ti­cal miles.  That jour­ney has on­ly two stops—the first be­ing Pape’ete, French Poly­ne­sia; and the sec­ond at the Pana­ma Canal in Pana­ma.

The fer­ry orig­i­nal­ly was sched­uled to ar­rive in March 2021.

About the Buc­coo Reef

The ves­sel was built by Aus­tralian ship­builder IN­CAT Tas­ma­nia at its ship­yard in Ho­bart, Aus­tralia.

IN­CAT be­gan con­struc­tion on Buc­coo Reef in 2019.  The com­pa­ny says the new 100-me­ter, high speed fer­ry (Wave Pierc­ing Cata­ma­ran) has been retro­fit­ted with state-of-the-art elec­tron­ic sys­tems.

The ship will have an op­er­at­ing speed of over 40 knots, which re­duces the sail­ing time with an in­creased num­ber of cross­ings per day, and al­low­ing for same day trav­el, thus im­prov­ing in­ter-is­land ac­cess.

The Buc­coo Reef—named af­ter To­ba­go’s largest and most pop­u­lar coral reef—will have ca­pac­i­ty for 1,000 pas­sen­gers in three lounges, which will in­clude a range of bars and food ser­vice ar­eas.  The ve­hi­cle deck will have 175 truck lane me­tres and ca­pac­i­ty for 182 cars, or 239 cars, if trucks are not car­ried.  In ad­di­tion, cit­i­zens will be able to en­joy com­fort­able coach style trav­el.