Blue Wave Harmony’s troubled journey to T&T: Vessel once detained, concerns raised over safety lapses

On Jan­u­ary 30, just days af­ter it reached T&T and while on sea tri­als, the ves­sel brought to ser­vice the in­ter-is­land seabridge—Blue Wave Har­mo­ny—was dam­aged dur­ing berthing ma­noeu­vres in To­ba­go.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk, the ves­sel was flagged in 2024 for safe­ty con­cerns.

With the State hav­ing to pay US$25,500 a day, Guardian Me­dia takes a look at what hap­pened at the Port of Scar­bor­ough dur­ing berthing that dam­aged the ship’s hull, and what the ves­sel’s doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ry showed about safe­ty over­sight be­fore it ever ar­rived in T&T on Jan­u­ary 22.

Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­[email protected]

In April 2024, a ves­sel his­to­ry re­port from S&P Glob­al’s mar­itime data­base showed that the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny was de­tained by the Unit­ed States Coast Guard (USCG) un­der Port State Con­trol in San Juan, Puer­to Ri­co, for 17 days.

Ad­di­tion­al doc­u­men­ta­tion on the de­ten­tion lists cat­e­gories of de­fi­cien­cies tied to ship main­te­nance and equip­ment, fire-fight­ing readi­ness, car­go-re­lat­ed safe­ty, and a load line is­sue con­nect­ed to the ship’s In­ter­na­tion­al Load Line Cer­tifi­cate (ILLC).

The ves­sel’s S&P his­to­ry al­so showed that the ship con­tin­ued to re­ceive Port State Con­trol in­spec­tions af­ter­wards, in­clud­ing in 2025. (See Ta­ble 1.)

Ves­sel de­ten­tions hap­pen from time to time, but last week’s berthing in­ci­dent in To­ba­go raised con­cerns about the ves­sel’s op­er­abil­i­ty and safe­ty con­cerns and the im­pact on To­ba­go, giv­en that the car­go ser­vice is the life­line of To­ba­go.

10 Apr 2024 San Juan, Puer­to Ri­co US Coast Guard De­tained – 17 days Load Line cer­tifi­cate (de­tain­able);

Fire pro­tec­tion sys­tems op­er­a­tion

27 Apr 2024 San Juan, Puer­to Ri­co US Coast Guard Ini­tial in­spec­tion Load Line cer­tifi­cate;

Fire pro­tec­tion sys­tems op­er­a­tion

22 Jun 2024 San Juan, Puer­to Ri­co US Coast Guard Fol­low-up in­spec­tion De­fects not itemised in re­port

07 Jul 2023 Vi­go, Spain Paris MOU Ini­tial in­spec­tion Car­go Ship Safe­ty Equip­ment cer­tifi­cate;

Free­board marks; Weath­er­tight doors;ISM

Pre-Jul 2023 Port not spec­i­fied Paris MOU In­spec­tion Load Lines (de­tain­able);

Car­go se­cur­ing (de­tain­able); Fire­fight­ing equip­ment avail­abil­i­ty (de­tain­able); MAR­POL An­nex I; Bal­last Wa­ter Man­age­ment;

ISM main­te­nance

05 May 2025 Haifa, Is­rael Med MOU De­tailed in­spec­tion Ship cer­tifi­cate (oth­er); Ma­chin­ery con­trols alarm; Sick­bay; Gas in­stru­ments; Gy­ro com­pass; ISM

21 Oct 2025 Isk­enderun, Turkey Med MOU More de­tailed in­spec­tion Crew cer­tifi­cate en­dorse­ment; Sta­bil­i­ty/load­ing in­for­ma­tion; Pub­lic ad­dress sys­tem;

Emer­gency light­ing/bat­ter­ies; Car­go Se­cur­ing Man­u­al; Radar; ECDIS; VDR

21 Dec 2025 Pi­raeus, Greece Paris MO More de­tailed in­spec­tion Ship cer­tifi­cate (oth­er);

Bridge op­er­a­tion

Last week, Guardian Me­dia’s In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk raised the is­sue of the ves­sel’s his­to­ry and de­ten­tion with Works Min­is­ter Jear­lean John, who ex­plained that “sit­u­a­tions of this na­ture are not un­com­mon in ves­sel op­er­a­tions.”

She said a de­ten­tion is on­ly lift­ed once the de­fi­cien­cies iden­ti­fied have been ful­ly rec­ti­fied to the sat­is­fac­tion of the in­spect­ing au­thor­i­ty, and once all re­quired re­ports and ver­i­fi­ca­tions have been du­ly com­plet­ed and ac­cept­ed.

She point­ed out that pub­lic Port State Con­trol (PSC) data­bas­es typ­i­cal­ly list the de­fi­cien­cies iden­ti­fied at the time of in­spec­tion, but do not re­flect the cor­rec­tive ac­tions im­ple­ment­ed, the res­o­lu­tions achieved, nor the pre­ven­tive mea­sures sub­se­quent­ly adopt­ed, which can some­times cre­ate con­cern if tak­en out of con­text.

“In this case, the ves­sel man­ag­er is prepar­ing the cor­re­spond­ing clar­i­fi­ca­tion, con­firm­ing that: All de­fi­cien­cies iden­ti­fied dur­ing the April 2024 in­spec­tion were prop­er­ly rec­ti­fied, the de­ten­tion was cleared in ac­cor­dance with USCG re­quire­ments, the ves­sel is cur­rent­ly in com­pli­ance with Load Line, Class and statu­to­ry re­quire­ments, and on­go­ing com­pli­ance is be­ing mon­i­tored un­der the su­per­vi­sion of the Clas­si­fi­ca­tion So­ci­ety and Flag State, as ap­plic­a­ble,” she said.

Min­is­ter John said that af­ter com­ple­tion of class re­new­al, the ves­sel has been in­spect­ed by sev­er­al port states with­out any find­ing struc­tur­al mat­ters.

“The ves­sel al­so passed a very strict PSC in­spec­tion in Pi­raeus/Greece in 12/2025 (De­cem­ber, 2025) with­out find­ings re­gard­ing ves­sel struc­ture or load line. Fi­nal­ly, the ves­sel just passed the an­nu­al class in­spec­tion in 12/2025 with­out de­fi­cien­cy and is man­aged in com­pli­ance with class and statu­to­ry reg­u­la­tions and un­der close su­per­vi­sion of class and flag. The de­fi­cien­cy re­gard­ing the load line at the time of the de­ten­tion in 04/2024 (April, 2024) has been the wrong ap­pli­ca­tion of the LL marks at the hull, which have been found not to be fol­low­ing the LL cer­tifi­cate. The marks have been re­newed at that time, and the de­fi­cien­cy has been closed,” she said.

Spe­cial­ist mar­itime and com­mer­cial At­tor­ney-at-Law Nyree Al­fon­so, af­ter re­view­ing the ves­sel his­to­ry re­port, said the ves­sel was show­ing cur­rent com­pli­ance with all of the in­ter­na­tion­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion re­quire­ments.

On the USCG de­ten­tion, she said, “In the or­di­nary course of things, the US Coast Guard is not go­ing to re­lease you if it is you have not fixed the de­fi­cien­cies that they have iden­ti­fied when they board you.”

She lat­er stat­ed, “The chances of you es­cap­ing the US Coast Guard with a de­fi­cien­cy not ad­dressed or not rec­ti­fied, I think, nil, nil, and nil.”

On the pub­lic fear that a past de­ten­tion alone means a ves­sel is un­safe now, Al­fon­so ar­gued that the stronger ev­i­dence is what the ship is cer­ti­fied to do at present, and what re­cent in­spec­tions show. She point­ed to the ex­is­tence of valid cer­tifi­cates and re­cent in­spec­tions as in­di­ca­tors of com­pli­ance.

She al­so ad­dressed the “ca­su­al­ty” en­try in the ves­sel his­to­ry—in­clud­ing a record of a fire/ex­plo­sion in­ci­dent list­ed as non-se­ri­ous—and said, “We call any kind of in­ci­dent that hap­pens… a ma­rine ca­su­al­ty.”

“Ma­rine ca­su­al­ties could be a ship to ship strik­ing, col­li­sion, a pier to ship, a fire of some form,” she said, adding that the term does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly mean the ves­sel was cat­a­stroph­i­cal­ly dam­aged or un­fit,” she said.

But while Al­fon­so fo­cused on cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and cur­rent com­pli­ance, she al­so ac­knowl­edged that the lev­el of de­tail the pub­lic wants is not usu­al­ly con­tained in a syn­op­sis-style his­to­ry record: “When you read through these syn­op­sis-type re­ports, it’s just a bunch of dates and in­for­ma­tion. It’s not telling you how it was re­solved, when it was re­solved. You don’t get that kind of de­tail or flavour.”

The Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (PATT) said it did not pro­cure the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny and had no role in se­lect­ing the ves­sel.

When con­tact­ed, PATT chair­man Dr Rod­ney Ram­roop said, “Well, first of all, the Port Au­thor­i­ty had noth­ing to do with the pro­cure­ment of the Blue Wave. That was done un­der NID­CO (Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed). We on­ly do the op­er­at­ing side of it. So NID­CO is in charge of that. NID­CO and the min­istry. So those peo­ple will be the ap­pro­pri­ate peo­ple. Yeah, we were not in­volved in the pro­cure­ment of the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny, not the Port Au­thor­i­ty.”

PATT’s own Re­quest for Pro­pos­al no­tice showed the au­thor­i­ty in­vit­ed bids for “The Pro­vi­sion of a Car­go Ves­sel for the In­ter-Is­land Seabridge” un­der RFP fo­lio: PATT06/2025, dat­ed Ju­ly 10, 2025. The no­tice stat­ed in­ter­est­ed com­pa­nies could sig­nal their in­ter­est be­tween Fri­day, Ju­ly 11, 2025 and Fri­day, Ju­ly 25, 2025, and that sealed bids were to be re­ceived by 10 am on Wednes­day, Sep­tem­ber 10, 2025.

Ques­tions were sent to NID­CO chair­man Neil Dook­ie via email. He ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt and promised to re­spond. There was no re­sponse be­fore pub­li­ca­tion.

How­ev­er, a NID­CO of­fi­cial fa­mil­iar with the pro­cure­ment process, who asked not to be named, said the de­ci­sion on which agency sends out ten­ders de­pends on what the gov­ern­ment wants pro­cured and which en­ti­ty is best placed to run the process.

The of­fi­cial said min­istries and state agen­cies can choose to use NID­CO be­cause “NID­CO is do­ing so much procur­ing for the gov­ern­ment… they have used NID­CO in the past to do the procur­ing pro­gramme,” but the Port Au­thor­i­ty can al­so be ap­proached, “de­pend­ing on the ex­per­tise re­quired.”

The of­fi­cial said nei­ther agency typ­i­cal­ly acts alone on tech­ni­cal mat­ters and that NID­CO, even when it does not have all the ex­per­tise “res­i­dent at NID­CO,” would “ap­proach oth­er agen­cies” for in­puts, in­clud­ing in­for­ma­tion on port fa­cil­i­ties and would con­sult ex­ter­nal tech­ni­cal re­sources such as ma­rine en­gi­neer­ing ex­per­tise from UTT.

The of­fi­cial said spec­i­fi­ca­tions are usu­al­ly guid­ed by end-user needs and stake­hold­er con­sul­ta­tions, in­clud­ing meet­ings with busi­ness in­ter­ests and that once spec­i­fi­ca­tions are agreed, an agency can “is­sue a call” based on those specs to lease or pro­cure a ves­sel. 

A Port source pro­vid­ed in­for­ma­tion on ear­li­er fig­ures sub­mit­ted to Cab­i­net in 2025, stat­ing the dai­ly char­ter rate pro­posed at that time was US$18,600 and that it would in­crease to US$19,000 per day up to Jan­u­ary 2026.

The Port source, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said an of­fer un­der con­sid­er­a­tion at that time in­clud­ed a sub­sti­tu­tion for the Cabo Star with the MV Sailor at US$19,000 per day, with a guar­an­teed pe­ri­od cov­er­ing 2026–2028. The Port source said MV Sailor was de­scribed as larg­er, with a pas­sen­ger ca­pac­i­ty of 120, com­pared with Cabo Star’s 100. But con­cerns in­clud­ed the length of the guar­an­tee pe­ri­od and po­si­tion­ing/repo­si­tion­ing costs.

In the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny record, the ves­sel is shown as Pana­ma-flagged.

The record lists cor­po­rate names con­nect­ed to the ship’s op­er­a­tion, in­clud­ing Blue Wave Corp and a ship man­age­ment en­ti­ty. But it does not, on its face, an­swer who the ul­ti­mate per­son is be­hind the com­pa­ny.

The Blue Wave Har­mo­ny was not in full com­mer­cial ser­vice when it was dam­aged in To­ba­go. It was on sea tri­als, a nor­mal step for com­mis­sion­ing and fa­mil­iari­sa­tion.

PATT said the ves­sel com­plet­ed its first sea tri­al on Jan­u­ary 27 and on Jan­u­ary 30 de­part­ed Port-of-Spain for a sec­ond sea tri­al to Scar­bor­ough. Then came the in­ci­dent.

In its re­lease at the time, PATT stat­ed: “Dur­ing berthing ma­noeu­vres at the Port of Scar­bor­ough this morn­ing, an in­ci­dent oc­curred, re­sult­ing in dam­age to the ves­sel’s hull.” PATT said “pre­lim­i­nary in­for­ma­tion in­di­cates that weath­er con­di­tions, in­clud­ing strong winds, were con­tribut­ing fac­tors,” and that a ma­rine pi­lot was as­sist­ing the cap­tain.

An up­date on Feb­ru­ary 3 said the ves­sel left Scar­bor­ough around 7.15 am, head­ed to Trinidad for re­pairs that will be in­spect­ed and cer­ti­fied, with the ship ex­pect­ed to en­ter ser­vice “in the com­ing days.”

Pho­tos and video from the scene showed vis­i­ble phys­i­cal dam­age con­sis­tent with a hard im­pact near the berth area, in­clud­ing dam­aged in­fra­struc­ture.

But an in­dus­try ex­pert had sharply dif­fer­ent views on how the in­ci­dent may have hap­pened.

A ship buy­er, sell­er and op­er­a­tor with 36 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in the mar­itime in­dus­try, who spoke on anonymi­ty, claimed the ves­sel “ac­tu­al­ly rammed in­to the wharf” and ar­gued that the pub­lic ex­pla­na­tion fo­cus­ing on rough seas did not square with the ba­sic lay­out of the port.

He said: “Your jet­ty is about 300 or 400 feet in a U-shape, so he would have al­ready en­tered that U-shape, so he would have been in some lev­el of pro­tect­ed wa­ter. So, if there was wind, if there was wind and he was al­ready in the jet­ty, he was al­ready in­side, so the wind and the rough seas couldn’t re­al­ly vary him that much.”

He ques­tioned whether the ves­sel ap­proached too fast, lost pow­er or whether stan­dard berthing con­trols were used prop­er­ly, and said: “He com­ing to moor up, he knew he had to be com­ing in dead slow.”

On whether the op­er­a­tion should have been aban­doned if con­di­tions were un­safe, he said: “If the con­di­tion wasn’t right for rough seas (as the min­is­ter said), then abort the boat­ing. If he has a mas­ter,  the mas­ter does not ask (take con­trol or guide) the pi­lot. He does not as­sume con­trol of the ves­sel. He gets to give guid­ance. But if the mas­ter of the ves­sel tells the pi­lot he’s not com­fort­able, then he says ‘aban­don, aban­don the boat­ing and take the ves­sel back to an­chor­age.’”

He al­so chal­lenged ear­ly talk that a sim­ple weld­ing job could be enough, say­ing the re­pair de­pends on what is found once dam­aged plat­ing is re­moved: “It’s on­ly when you re­move the plate, then you will see. I wouldn’t doubt any, some frame may have shift­ed, bent or buck­led.”

He said that if frames were dam­aged, the ves­sel may need a dry dock and cit­ed the cost of dock­ing as a ma­jor fac­tor.

The in­dus­try in­sid­er called for a prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to what did and did not hap­pen dur­ing berthing of the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny.