The T&T Spir­it has been pulled off the in­ter-is­land seabridge un­til Sat­ur­day at ear­li­est, Port Au­thor­i­ty of T&T chair­man Lyle Alexan­der con­firmed yes­ter­day.

With­in re­cent weeks, the ves­sel has been plagued by me­chan­i­cal prob­lems which have re­sult­ed in sev­er­al de­lays and can­cel­la­tions. The ves­sel has not sailed since de­vel­op­ing me­chan­i­cal is­sues on its jour­ney from To­ba­go to Trinidad on Mon­day morn­ing.

How­ev­er, Alexan­der yes­ter­day that the cur­rent main­te­nance sched­ule should not be blamed for the mishap. He said the ves­sel had to be pulled be­cause a part needs to be ac­quired from abroad to ef­fect the re­pairs

“The part has been iden­ti­fied and has been lo­cat­ed in Ger­many. We are await­ing the ar­rival, we ex­pect them on Thurs­day (to­day), they come on Thurs­day, they re­pair on Fri­day and we will be back on­line by Sat­ur­day,” Alexan­der said.

He in­sist­ed the ves­sel is be­ing vig­or­ous­ly main­tained but stressed that safe­ty is para­mount.

“Re­pairs on a Wednes­day don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly ad­dress those is­sues. As I said we don’t open a part to check that is some­thing that ought to have been checked or sim­ply opened and phased out, be­cause it made a cer­tain amount of hours, so those are the things that ought to have hap­pened and they did not ob­vi­ous­ly and we are now pay­ing for hav­ing not done those kinds of things be­fore. But those are not the kinds of is­sues that are dealt with on a week­ly main­te­nance sched­ule,” he said.

Alexan­der de­scribed the part to be sourced as a ‘web con­nec­tor’, which is found near the en­gine of the ves­sel to aid in ef­fec­tive move­ment. How­ev­er, he was un­able to give an es­ti­mat­ed cost of the re­place­ment part.

Al­though the Galleons Pas­sage does not sail on a Tues­day, Thurs­day and Sat­ur­day it will be called up­on to fill the breach in the in­ter­im, Alexan­der said.