Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­les@guardian.co.tt

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jear­lean John says she is await­ing ex­pert as­sess­ments on the MV Blue Wave Har­mo­ny, af­ter the ves­sel sus­tained hull dam­age in Scar­bor­ough.

John said cer­ti­fied welders were dis­patched to To­ba­go yes­ter­day, as of­fi­cials try to de­ter­mine how quick­ly it can re­turn to ser­vice.

Speak­ing to re­porters as she made her way in­to Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, John was pressed about whether the Gov­ern­ment would move to a tem­po­rary so­lu­tion while the ves­sel is out of op­er­a­tion.

Her re­sponse point­ed to seabridge op­er­a­tions con­tin­u­ing via the rest of the fer­ry fleet.

“The rest of the seabridge has not stopped. All the oth­er fer­ries, the Galleons Pas­sage, the T&T Spir­it, the Buc­coo Reef, they’re all on the sea bridge. So what hap­pened was that it had come in (MV Blue Wave Har­mo­ny). It was do­ing sea tri­als, be­cause it’s now be­ing put on the route. So that was the sec­ond sea tri­al out of Port-of-Spain. It got in­to Scar­bor­ough safe­ly. It had a lot of rain, wind and so on. So when they were about to push off, it hit the bridge and dam­aged the hull.”

Asked di­rect­ly how long the ves­sel would be down for, John said she could not yet give a time­frame be­cause she was still await­ing the tech­ni­cal eval­u­a­tion, but said ear­ly steps were al­ready tak­en to be­gin re­pairs.

“Well, we are hop­ing not too long. I’m still await­ing the eval­u­a­tion from the ex­perts, and we had some cer­ti­fied welders trav­el­ling to To­ba­go ear­ly this morn­ing, so I’m just await­ing that. I’m hop­ing not too long.”

In a me­dia state­ment, the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go said the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny left Port-of-Spain on Thurs­day for its sec­ond sea tri­al sail­ing to Scar­bor­ough, and that an in­ci­dent oc­curred dur­ing berthing ma­noeu­vres, re­sult­ing in dam­age to the ves­sel’s hull.

The au­thor­i­ty said on­ly the crew was on board at the time. It added that there were no re­ports of in­juries, and the ves­sel was se­cured along­side a berth and was sta­ble, with im­me­di­ate safe­ty pro­to­cols ac­ti­vat­ed.

The Port Au­thor­i­ty said pre­lim­i­nary in­for­ma­tion in­di­cates weath­er con­di­tions, in­clud­ing strong winds, were con­tribut­ing fac­tors, and that tech­ni­cal teams are con­duct­ing dam­age as­sess­ments in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the ves­sel op­er­a­tor and the ap­pro­pri­ate agen­cies. It al­so said port op­er­a­tions in Scar­bor­ough linked to sched­uled in­ter-is­land fer­ry sail­ings con­tin­ue to op­er­ate nor­mal­ly, and that fur­ther up­dates will be pro­vid­ed.

The ves­sel ar­rived in T&T last week as a tem­po­rary re­place­ment for the Cabo Star, whose lease had end­ed on Jan­u­ary 12.