The newest fer­ry in the na­tion­al fleet—the Buc­coo Reef—has left the IN­CAT ship­yard in Ho­bart, Tas­ma­nia, and be­gun her jour­ney home to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ac­cord­ing to a news re­lease from the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NID­CO), the ves­sel set sail for T&T at 12:10 am (lo­cal time) to­day, Thurs­day 21 Jan­u­ary 2021.

It is ex­pect­ed to trav­el some 9,266 nau­ti­cal miles and is sched­uled to ar­rive in March 2021.

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.