Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Weeks af­ter two San­ta Flo­ra fish­er­men and the ves­sel they were aboard dis­ap­peared at sea with­out a trace, a US$5,000 re­ward is be­ing of­fered for in­for­ma­tion lead­ing to their re­cov­ery.

The re­ward was post­ed by a Unit­ed King­dom res­i­dent who had hired the fish­er­men — Alvin Mor­gan and Damien Ruiz — to de­liv­er a 29-foot fish­ing pirogue to Union Is­land, near St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

The ves­sel, named Kam­pai, was built in Trinidad.

Ruiz, 47, a fa­ther of two and Mor­gan, a fa­ther of three, both of San­ta Flo­ra, left To­ba­go on March 2 to de­liv­er the 29-foot pirogue.

The white and teal ves­sel de­part­ed from To­ba­go at about 1.30 pm on March 2, with an es­ti­mat­ed ar­rival in Union Is­land be­tween 5 pm and 6 pm that day. Nei­ther the boat nor the crew reached their des­ti­na­tion, and their where­abouts re­main a mys­tery.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the boat was col­lect­ed on March 1, and one of the en­gines was not func­tion­ing cor­rect­ly when test­ed, but it was sub­se­quent­ly re­paired.

Ruiz’s broth­er Sime­on told Guardian Me­dia that he was in­formed that the men had no life­jack­ets and that the ves­sel was not equipped with a GPS track­er.

He al­so not­ed that there was a rough seas bul­letin in ef­fect when they left. De­spite his doubts that his broth­er is still alive, Sime­on called for stepped-up ef­forts to find them so the fam­i­lies could get clo­sure. Any­one with in­for­ma­tion and in­ter­est­ed in the re­ward can email Miss­ing.Kam­pai143@gmail.com. The own­er as­sured that the in­for­ma­tion will be treat­ed with strict con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.