Blue Wave Harmony begins regular cargo runs today

The MV Blue Wave Har­mo­ny car­go ves­sel will sail from Port-of-Spain to Scar­bor­ough at 2 pm, Mon­day to Fri­day, this week, as au­thor­i­ties move to re­store sta­bil­i­ty to the in­ter-is­land seabridge.

The TT In­ter­is­land Trans­porta­tion Com­pa­ny re­leased the sched­ule over the week­end, sig­nalling a re­turn to some sem­blance of nor­mal­cy. Pas­sen­gers will al­so be al­lowed to ac­com­pa­ny truck­ers aboard the ves­sel. The ship will de­part To­ba­go at 11 pm each day.

The MV Blue Wave ar­rived in Trinidad and To­ba­go on Jan­u­ary 22, ten days af­ter the Cabo Star was with­drawn from ser­vice.

The tran­si­tion be­tween ves­sels has not been smooth, as To­ba­go’s busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, farm­ers and res­i­dents have com­plained of short­ages of sup­plies on the is­land.

The MV Blue Wave has been un­der­go­ing sea tri­als as cap­tain Tim Fenech fa­mil­iaris­es him­self with the in­ter-is­land route.

Full ser­vice was de­layed due to me­chan­i­cal is­sues with the ves­sel’s ramp, and an in­ci­dent near the To­ba­go jet­ty al­so re­sult­ed in dam­age to the hull.

Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John con­firmed in a What­sApp mes­sage to Guardian Me­dia that night sea tri­als con­clud­ed yes­ter­day.

She said the ves­sel has been ser­vic­ing the seabridge over the past week with full car­go loads. John al­so vis­it­ed the Port of Port-of-Spain twice last Mon­day to ob­serve op­er­a­tions first-hand.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, there is no back­log of car­go at the port, as the Port Au­thor­i­ty has been clear­ing the yard with each sail­ing.

She main­tained that the ves­sel, de­spite crit­i­cism in some quar­ters, is a “beast” ca­pa­ble of han­dling the route. She added that sea tri­als were nec­es­sary to iron out op­er­a­tional is­sues and that a lo­cal ma­rine pi­lot has been as­sist­ing the cap­tain.

John al­so said any short­ages in To­ba­go were due to an in­suf­fi­cient num­ber of sup­pli­ers serv­ing the is­land.

How­ev­er, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine ac­knowl­edged dis­rup­tions to car­go ser­vice last Sun­day, not­ing that the THA-man­aged Stud­ley Park En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed had been un­able to se­cure a re­li­able sup­ply of bi­tu­men from Trinidad. He said the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly is con­sid­er­ing com­pen­sat­ing busi­ness­es for loss­es.

On Thurs­day, the THA in­vit­ed busi­ness­es to sub­mit es­ti­mates of their loss­es be­tween Jan­u­ary 12 and Feb­ru­ary 26 to the Eco­nom­ic Man­age­ment Re­search Unit of the Di­vi­sion of Fi­nance.

On Feb­ru­ary 9, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that the MV Blue Wave had been flagged for safe­ty con­cerns in 2024, ac­cord­ing to the S&P Glob­al mar­itime data­base. When asked last Sun­day whether he was aware the data­base not­ed 28 de­fects be­tween 2015 and 2023, Au­gus­tine said he had not seen the re­port.

John dis­missed the con­cerns, say­ing, “Sit­u­a­tions of this na­ture are not un­com­mon in ves­sel op­er­a­tions.”

She added that any de­ten­tion of the MV Blue Wave would on­ly be lift­ed af­ter all is­sues iden­ti­fied dur­ing mar­itime in­spec­tions were ful­ly ad­dressed. — S NICHOLAS