Just un­der a month af­ter a fire on board the MV Cabo Star forced the in­ter-is­land trans­porta­tion ves­sel out of ser­vice, it will re­turn to op­er­a­tion this af­ter­noon.

This was con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia by CEO of the In­ter-Is­land Trans­porta­tion Com­pa­ny (TTIT), Vil­ma Lewis-Cock­burn, last night.

In an up­date, Lewis-Cock­burn said, "The MV Cabo Star has been in­spect­ed and cer­ti­fied as safe to op­er­ate."

The ves­sel is ex­pect­ed to sail at 2 pm to­day, with the re­turn sail­ing de­part­ing Scar­bor­ough at 11 pm tonight.

Around 11.23 pm on Au­gust 23, a fire broke out in one of the Cabo Star’s en­gine rooms as the ves­sel was en route to Port-of-Spain. It dis­rupt­ed op­er­a­tions, caus­ing over 100 peo­ple on board to be strand­ed for 18 hours at sea. The fire dam­aged one of its aux­il­iary en­gines and elec­tri­cal ca­bles.

The ves­sel sub­se­quent­ly re­turned to Trinidad for re­pairs, which were com­plet­ed yes­ter­day and the ves­sel cer­ti­fied to re­turn to ser­vice.

With the MV Cabo Star un­der re­pairs, the MV Em­prende­do­ra ar­rived at the Port of Port-of-Spain fron Venezuela on Sep­tem­ber 9 to pro­vide re­lief to pas­sen­gers us­ing the seabridge, in­clud­ing lo­cal truck­ers.

Ear­li­er yes­ter­day, the Port Au­thor­i­ty apol­o­gised once more for the in­con­ve­nience the sit­u­a­tion caused.