The APT James, one of two new fer­ries pur­chased for the seabridge, left the Austal ship­yard in Vung Tau, Viet­nam, on Thurs­day and is on its way to T&T.

The Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NID­CO) an­nounced that the ves­sel set sail at 8.30 pm lo­cal time) on its jour­ney of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 11,573 nau­ti­cal miles. How­ev­er, iots es­ti­mat­ed time of ar­rival in this coun­try was not giv­en.

Aus­tralian com­pa­ny Austal was con­tract­ed by NID­CO to de­sign and build the 94-me­tre high speed ve­hi­cle and pas­sen­ger cata­ma­ran which will "pro­vide high speed pas­sen­ger and ve­hi­cle op­er­a­tions on the key sea bridge be­tween the is­lands of Trinidad and To­ba­go".

The ves­sel is de­signed to car­ry 926 pas­sen­gers and 250 cars at speeds of 37.5 knots and will op­er­ate a dai­ly ser­vice be­tween tTrinidad and To­ba­go. The ship will al­so fea­ture Austal’s new­ly de­vel­oped and in­dus­try lead­ing in­no­va­tion in smart ship tech­nol­o­gy, MarineLink Smart.