Renu­ka Singh

The tri­al run of the Galleons Pas­sage be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go was a suc­cess ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture and De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Nid­co).

The in­ter-is­land fer­ry took four and a half hours to make the trip and spent some time at the docks in Scar­bor­ough be­fore re­turn­ing to Trinidad.

So­cial me­dia was rife with com­ments and pic­tures of the fer­ry un­able to con­nect with the ramp in To­ba­go and by 2 pm yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port tweet­ed that the crew was "cur­rent­ly in the process of ex­plor­ing dock­ing op­tions and analysing all re­quired lo­gis­tics need­ed for a seam­less op­er­a­tion when the ves­sel is com­mis­sioned in­to ser­vice".

An hour lat­er, Nid­co sent a state­ment prais­ing the run and say­ing that its ob­jec­tive was to de­ter­mine the "du­ra­tion of the jour­ney" to To­ba­go.

"That is speeds, the over­all qual­i­ty of on-board ex­pe­ri­ence, and to check some pas­sen­ger safe­ty fea­tures," the re­lease said.

"We al­so sought to de­ter­mine the more suit­able berthing op­tion, since the ves­sel is equipped with both bow and stern ramps."

The Nid­co said that based on the tri­al run, the Galleons Pas­sage will use its stern ramp in both is­lands.

The com­pa­ny al­so de­scribed all oth­er checks as "high­ly suc­cess­ful".

In a sub­se­quent in­ter­view, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan re­it­er­at­ed that yes­ter­day's tri­al run was not about whether the fer­ry could berth in To­ba­go.

"We al­ways knew that the ramp on the bow was go­ing to be a chal­lenge and they were just test­ing that to­day (yes­ter­day)," Sinanan said.

He said all of the pre­vi­ous fer­ries berthed by the stern and not the bow and the Galleons Pas­sage was no dif­fer­ent.

He said Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ac­tivist De­vant Ma­haraj was busy on so­cial me­dia spread­ing ru­mours about the boat.

"To­day was not about dock­ing, it was about speed and safe­ty," he said.

Kam­la: It's a piece of junk

But, Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day de­scribed the Galleon's Pas­sage as a piece of junk.

Speak­ing to re­porters at her con­stituen­cy of­fice yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the boat was of no use to the peo­ple of T&T.

Asked to com­ment on a re­port that the ex­it ramp on the boat was some 20 feet off the ground, so ve­hi­cles could not ex­it the fer­ry, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, "Peo­ple were anx­ious and ex­cit­ed to get a con­nec­tion with the sea bridge but the boat can­not dock. Once again this shows the com­pe­tence and mis­man­age­ment of the Row­ley gov­ern­ment and we are once again left with­out a sea bridge.

"We bought a boat that is junk and scrap iron. How could they buy a new boat and have it parked up at Staubles Bay? Now that it ac­tu­al­ly at­tempt­ing to float it can­not dock."—with re­port­ing by Rad­hi­ca Sookraj