Pas­sen­gers try­ing to make their way to To­ba­go via the Galleons Pas­sage were left con­fused as to the ex­act rea­son why the ves­sel had to re­turn to the Port of Port-of-Spain while on the way to the Scar­bor­ough Port yes­ter­day.

The ves­sel was mak­ing the jour­ney to To­ba­go af­ter hav­ing de­part­ed Port-of-Spain around 11 am. The ves­sel was sched­uled to ar­rive in To­ba­go at 4.30 pm

But pas­sen­gers claim around 2 pm, al­most mid­way through the jour­ney, it was an­nounced that the Galleons Pas­sage would not make it to Scar­bor­ough but had to re­turn to Trinidad.

One man,who made a short record­ing, which has been mak­ing the rounds on so­cial me­dia, claims pas­sen­gers were told rough seas and bad weath­er were be­ing giv­en as the rea­sons for the jour­ney be­ing abort­ed. His record­ing showed bright sun and calm seas.

Lat­er an­oth­er video sur­faced show­ing pas­sen­gers hav­ing to dis­em­bark and re­move their cars from on board the ves­sels at the Port of Port- of- Spain.

Checks with me­te­o­rol­o­gists re­vealed there were no bul­letins for rough seas or ad­verse weath­er.

ru­mours have been swirling about me­chan­i­cal prob­lems fac­ing the Galleons Pas­sage and the T&T Spir­it from THA’s Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Wat­son Duke.

Ef­forts were made to con­tact the act­ing chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the in­ter is­land trans­porta­tion com­pa­ny, Vil­ma Lewis Cock­burn, for a com­ment but they were fu­tile.

In a state­ment late yes­ter­day, Nid­co said the ves­sel ex­pe­ri­enced rough sea con­di­tions which re­sult­ed in it re­turn­ing to Port-of-Spain/

It said sea con­di­tions ex­pe­ri­enced were record­ed at 3.5 me­tres when the av­er­age mea­sure­ment is capped at 1.5 me­tres. Dur­ing the rough sea con­di­tions, two pan­els on the car deck be­came dis­lodged and came in­to con­tact with two ve­hi­cles re­sult­ing in mi­nor dam­age to both ve­hi­cles.

In the in­ter­est of safe­ty, the cap­tain de­cid­ed to re­turn to Port-of-Spain to have the pan­el sys­tem re­paired.