Galleons makes 2nd run to Tobago

Herbert George, chairman of the National Infrastructure Development Company (NIDCO) is convinced that there is still some fine-tuning to be done before the Galleons Passage is put into service.

Yesterday, NIDCO officials sailed aboard the vessel to Tobago in what was considered its second test run to the island. The vessel departed Port of Spain at 7.41 am and arrived in Scarborough at 11.46 am.

For close to 45 minutes, the team aboard the vessel remained on the inside as Sunday Newsday observed officials attempting to get the ramp to line up with the ramp at the port compound.

Speaking with Sunday Newsday as he disembarked, George described the trial run was a success.

“I’m quite comfortable… as far as the vessel everything is fine.

“The ramp though, we have some tweaking to do to make it fit for all seasons; be it high tide or low tide, so we would be doing that in the next week and hopefully during that time we would be getting the necessary certificates and so from the Marine Services Department to be able to sail the vessel with passengers,” he said.

George said, as far as the mechanical functioning of the vessel, there were no problems as it was a smooth sailing to Tobago.

“We have some tweaking to do. As far as this ramp is concerned, we are going to make it wider so that the vessel can berth there much easier than it did today. Although today was a learning experience, I think we can make some adjustments and have it much easier,” he said. Members of the media were then invited inside for a tour of the vessel. Upon entering the vehicle ramp, George indicated that there were plans to install a canopy in that section, so as to prevent the sea spray from coming in onto the vehicles.

“The seller is responsible for that installation, he has had a lot of difficulties to get a vendor to do that work for him, he has gotten someone from Canada, they came and took the measurements and they have gone to fabricate the canopy to install it. They said the next three or so weeks, they would come with the material to have it installed,” he said.

George noted, however, that the installation would not delay the sailing of the vessel on the inter-island route.

As the team proceeded to the top deck, George said that the vessel would accommodate approximately 475 passengers in the first instance as the sun deck would not be used. He said NIDCO would continue to own and maintain the vessel, while it would be wet leased to the Port Authority.

George also touched on maintenance. “NIDCO has some capacity to maintain vessels, we have been doing that with the water taxis, but we recognise that this is not merely enough. So as part of the arrangement, we went out and we got an electrical engineer, a mechanical engineer and another kind of a maintenance manager to come in and he would set up the structure to maintain not only this one but all the vessels under NIDCO’s purview.”