The newest fer­ry in the na­tion­al fleet—the Buc­coo Reef—has recom­menced her jour­ney home to Trinidad and To­ba­go and is ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in one month’s time.

Ac­cord­ing to a news re­lease from the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NID­CO), the ves­sel set sail for T&T from Bris­bane, Aus­tralia, on Mon­day 8th March 2021, on its 8,914 nau­ti­cal miles (nm) jour­ney home.

NID­CO says the voy­age is sched­uled to take 31 days, fair weath­er per­mit­ting.

Prob­lems pre­sent­ed dur­ing the ear­li­er start of the de­liv­ery voy­age back in Jan­u­ary, which caused the ves­sel to re­turn to Ho­bart, have all been in­ves­ti­gat­ed and cor­rect­ed by the ship­builder, IN­CAT, and en­gi­neers from the Orig­i­nal Equip­ment Man­u­fac­tur­ers (OEM).  Re­pairs were im­ped­ed due to de­lays en­coun­tered with the sup­ply of parts and re­place­ment units from Ger­many and USA.  How­ev­er, the ves­sel is now ex­pect­ed to pro­vide the trou­ble-free ser­vice for which it was built.

The Buc­coo Reef will make two sched­uled stops on her long jour­ney home: first­ly, at Pape’ete in French Poly­ne­sia; and then at the Pana­ma Canal in Pana­ma, be­fore dock­ing in sweet T&T.

As with the APT James, NID­CO has promised to share pe­ri­od­ic up­dates on the progress of the Buc­coo Reef’s home­ward jour­ney.

About the Buc­coo Reef

The ves­sel was built by Aus­tralian ship­builder IN­CAT Tas­ma­nia at its ship­yard in Ho­bart, Aus­tralia.

IN­CAT be­gan con­struc­tion on Buc­coo Reef in 2019.  The com­pa­ny says the new 100-me­ter, high speed fer­ry (Wave Pierc­ing Cata­ma­ran) has been retro­fit­ted with state-of-the-art elec­tron­ic sys­tems.

The ship will have an op­er­at­ing speed of over 40 knots, which re­duces the sail­ing time with an in­creased num­ber of cross­ings per day, and al­low­ing for same day trav­el, thus im­prov­ing in­ter-is­land ac­cess.

The Buc­coo Reef—named af­ter To­ba­go’s largest and most pop­u­lar coral reef—will have ca­pac­i­ty for 1,000 pas­sen­gers in three lounges, which will in­clude a range of bars and food ser­vice ar­eas.  The ve­hi­cle deck will have 175 truck lane me­tres and ca­pac­i­ty for 182 cars, or 239 cars, if trucks are not car­ried.  In ad­di­tion, cit­i­zens will be able to en­joy com­fort­able coach style trav­el.