Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Rough seas caused by feed­er bands from Trop­i­cal Storm Ernesto have left boat own­ers in the Ch­aguara­mas Penin­su­la fac­ing loss­es and scram­bling to make re­pairs.

The tur­bu­lent wa­ters caused sig­nif­i­cant dam­age, with many in the area now busy re­pair­ing boats and jet­ties.

Guardian Me­dia has learned that boat own­ers had to move their ves­sels to safe­ty due to the wors­en­ing con­di­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to wit­ness­es, the seas start­ed get­ting rough just af­ter mid­night and con­tin­ued in­to the morn­ing.

Video footage showed chop­py wa­ters at the Co­corite Jet­ty.

At Pow­er Boats in Ch­aguara­mas, crews were seen re­pair­ing a dam­aged jet­ty.

Boat and ma­ri­na own­er Christo­pher Bu­ford at­trib­uted the rough seas to Trop­i­cal Storm Ernesto, not­ing that many boats had bro­ken their moor­ings.

“We seem to be ex­pe­ri­enc­ing some feed­er band ef­fects from the trop­i­cal storm de­vel­op­ing fur­ther up in the Caribbean, which has sig­nif­i­cant­ly ag­i­tat­ed the seas. The moon isn’t help­ing ei­ther, as the tide is high and the seas are rough. Every­one is down here to en­sure their ves­sels are se­cure­ly moored. There were a few in­stances this morn­ing where boats broke free from their moor­ings, but the crew and oth­ers from the yard quick­ly worked to­geth­er to se­cure them safe­ly. Now, every­one is just watch­ing and wait­ing to see what hap­pens next,” Bu­ford ex­plained.

Bu­ford al­so said that the fu­el dock at Pow­er Boats Ma­ri­na sus­tained dam­age.

“Yes, one boat ac­tu­al­ly crashed in­to the fu­el dock that’s cur­rent­ly be­ing re­paired, but that sit­u­a­tion was quick­ly han­dled. Every­one is now more alert and stand­ing by in case any­thing else hap­pens”, he said.

The rough seas are ex­pect­ed to sub­side lat­er to­day.