An­na-Lisa Paul

Two hours af­ter the par­ty boat Is­land Roy­al­ty was es­cort­ed back to shore fol­low­ing safe­ty con­cerns yes­ter­day, se­cu­ri­ty forces ef­fec­tive­ly shut things down af­ter de­tain­ing the cap­tain and pro­mot­er.

The pre­ma­ture ac­tion led to some an­gry pa­trons de­mand­ing their mon­ey back from the or­gan­is­ers as they claimed to have been short-changed.

The com­mer­cial ves­sel, which can ac­com­mo­date up to 300 per­sons in­clu­sive of its’ crew, was set to host the Silent Morn­ing Cool­er Cruise be­tween 9 am and 2 pm.

How­ev­er, it is be­lieved the ves­sel was over­loaded.

Fol­low­ing a head count by the Coast Guard and the Po­lice Ser­vice, the num­ber of pas­sen­gers stood at 409, ex­clud­ing the 15-mem­ber crew.

The two-boat pre­mi­um event which saw pa­trons pay­ing be­tween US$80 and US$125 per tick­et, promised a four-hour biki­ni boat and wa­ter fes­ti­val cruise cul­mi­nat­ing in a par­ty down the is­lands.

De­part­ing the Hy­att Wa­ter­front, Wright­son Road, around 10 am - the Is­land Roy­al­ty spent close to two hours out at sea be­fore they were board­ed by coast guard of­fi­cials dur­ing a rou­tine safe­ty check.

It was re­port­ed that when of­fi­cials re­quest­ed a pas­sen­ger man­i­fest to de­ter­mine just ex­act­ly how many per­sons were on board, one could not be pro­vid­ed.

This prompt­ed coast guard of­fi­cers to di­rect the cap­tain to re­turn to port.

Un­aware of why the boat had re­turned to shore ini­tial­ly, many of the pa­trons Guardian Me­dia spoke with claimed not to know the ves­sel had been over­loaded.

And while some lat­er ex­pressed alarm and sur­prise, many oth­ers seemed to be non­cha­lant about the lack of ad­e­quate life jack­ets on board.

Par­ty-go­ers on the Is­land Roy­al­ty were sup­posed to be treat­ed to a break­fast cool­er cruise, while those on the Har­bour Mas­ter were ex­pect­ed to be treat­ed to a pre­mi­um drinks and break­fast all-in­clu­sive com­plete with a va­ri­ety of wa­ter ac­tiv­i­ties.

The Is­land Roy­al­ty was sched­uled to de­part the Hy­att Wa­ter­front, while the Har­bour Mas­ter left their boat­yard at West­ern Main Road, St James.

Al­though the pro­mot­er de­clined to pro­vide his name, he claimed not to know what the fuss was about as he said, “There are no safe­ty is­sues here. There was no ri­ot or fights on board.”

En­dors­ing the pre-emp­tive ac­tion as he looked on at the chaot­ic scene yes­ter­day, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan com­mend­ed the Coast Guard and TTPS for their time­ly in­ter­ven­tion.

He said, “At the end of the day when you have a ves­sel that is li­censed for a cer­tain amount of peo­ple, and if the own­ers of the ves­sel ex­ceed that amount, what they are do­ing is putting peo­ple’s lives at stake and we can­not al­low that.”

Yes­ter­day’s in­ci­dent was the sec­ond such in­ci­dent that the MSD, the TTPS and the Coast Guard had been forced to in­ter­vene in.

Last Sun­day, the or­ga­nis­ers of the SO­CA RAFF UP 2020 ex­pe­ri­enced a me­chan­i­cal is­sue on one of the boats.

SO­CA RAFF UP 2020 be­gan around 3 pm on Feb­ru­ary 16 and was card­ed to run un­til 8 pm aboard the ves­sel called The Em­bassy.

An SOS via so­cial me­dia by pa­trons who claimed the ves­sel was sink­ing, spurred mar­itime agen­cies to rush to their as­sis­tance.

One of the pa­trons claimed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 90 min­utes af­ter board­ing, the boat ex­pe­ri­enc­ed me­chan­i­cal and elec­tri­cal prob­lems which led to the boat tak­ing in wa­ter.

It was on­ly af­ter an ap­peal was made to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith that oth­er boats were brought along­side for par­ty-go­ers to dis­em­bark.

As a re­sult, Sinanan warned that “We do have in­spec­tions now on al­most every ves­sel that goes out to make sure they are with­in the lim­it. We in­tend to clamp down on it.”

The min­is­ter said Cab­i­net re­cent­ly ap­proved new guide­lines for par­ty boats to en­sure they op­er­ate with­in the law, and yes­ter­day’s ac­tion was just an­oth­er facet of its’ im­ple­men­ta­tion.

In­di­cat­ing that the MSD Di­rec­tor and the TTPS will de­ter­mine what con­se­quences the cap­tain and pro­mot­er will face, even though the fines are said to be nom­i­nal, Sinanan said, “It is a work in progress. Every ves­sel that goes out there must have ad­e­quate life jack­ets and do safe­ty brief­in­gs, and must not be over­loaded.”

He added, “What you see hap­pen­ing here is the sys­tem work­ing.”

Sinanan con­clud­ed, “The re­ports that I get about a lot of these par­ty boats…it is re­al­ly out of hand and we in­tend to bring it back with­in the guid­ance of the law.”

Fol­low­ing the ar­rival of Gold Com­man­der for Car­ni­val, DCP Jayson Forde - the cap­tain and pro­mot­er were de­tained and placed in a marked po­lice ve­hi­cle to be tak­en to the Cen­tral Po­lice Sta­tion, St Vin­cent Street.

To par­ty-go­ers over the next few days, Forde ad­vised, “We will be hav­ing strin­gent checks.”

“It is the Car­ni­val sea­son and we want peo­ple to en­joy them­selves but we do not want them en­dan­ger­ing them­selves in the midst of en­joy­ment.

“We will be hav­ing checks to make sure the pro­mot­ers, the cap­tains and oth­ers as­so­ci­at­ed with the boats…that they do what is ex­pect­ed of them so they will be pro­tect­ing the lives of the par­ty-go­ers in their care.”