Coast Guard, fishermen rescue disabled yacht

OT­TO CAR­RING­TON

Se­nior Re­porter

A co­or­di­nat­ed emer­gency re­sponse in­volv­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard, North Post Ra­dio Sta­tion, mar­itime stake­hold­ers and mem­bers of the lo­cal fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty, re­sult­ed in the res­cue of a dis­abled yacht that had be­gun drift­ing to­wards Venezue­lan wa­ters.

Re­ports said the sail­ing ves­sel SV La Bo­heme, which was trav­el­ling from Grena­da to Trinidad and To­ba­go, ex­pe­ri­enced en­gine fail­ure and was left with­out wind to pow­er its sails.

With the ves­sel drift­ing to­wards the mar­itime bor­der with Venezuela, a dis­tress call was made and re­ceived by North Post Ra­dio Sta­tion, which main­tains a con­tin­u­ous watch for emer­gency calls at sea.

The Coast Guard was alert­ed and launched a re­sponse, lo­cat­ing the yacht in wa­ters near the Venezue­lan bound­ary. Of­fi­cers then took the ves­sel un­der tow and trans­port­ed it safe­ly to the Coast Guard base.

Fur­ther co­or­di­na­tion was car­ried out by the Mar­itime Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go, while lo­cal fish­er­man Jesse James as­sist­ed in the fi­nal stage of the op­er­a­tion.

The yacht was lat­er towed to Ch­aguara­mas Bay, where it was se­cured on a moor­ing.

Mar­itime stake­hold­ers de­scribed the res­cue as an ex­am­ple of ef­fec­tive col­lab­o­ra­tion among emer­gency ser­vices, in­dus­try groups and the boat­ing com­mu­ni­ty to en­sure the safe­ty of both lo­cal and vis­it­ing in­ter­na­tion­al cruis­ers.