Two off­shore pa­trol ves­sels for the Coast Guard ar­rived in the coun­try yes­ter­day. The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter post­ed a video of the two boats ar­riv­ing in Port-of-Spain on a barge, along with the words, “The TTS Scar­bor­ough and the TTS Port-of-Spain Off­shore pa­trol ves­sels ar­rive from Aus­tralia.”

The ves­sels were built by Austal Lim­it­ed which an­nounced on May 14 that it had de­liv­ered the two Cape-class pa­trol boats to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard (TTCG).

The two 58 me­tre pa­trol boats were ac­cept­ed by Lieu­tenant Com­man­der Fran­cise Paulette Ca­zoe of the TTCG at a de­liv­ery cer­e­mo­ny held at Austal Aus­tralia’s Hen­der­son ship­yard on that day.

Austal was award­ed a US$126 mil­lion con­tract for the two pa­trol boats by the Gov­ern­ment in Au­gust 2019, with fi­nan­cial sup­port pro­vid­ed by the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment’s De­fence Ex­port Fa­cil­i­ty, arranged by Ex­port Fi­nance Aus­tralia (EFA).

The TTS Scarborough and TTS Port-of-Spain arriving in Port-of-Spain yesterday.

Austal Lim­it­ed Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Pad­dy Gregg said the two pa­trol boats were the first Cape-class ves­sels man­u­fac­tured by Austal to be ex­port­ed.

The ves­sels con­tain a num­ber of de­sign cus­tomi­sa­tions to meet TTCG mis­sion re­quire­ments, in­clud­ing ad­di­tion­al ar­ma­ment place­ments and crew ac­com­mo­da­tion for up to 27 peo­ple.

Both TTS Port-of-Spain and TTS Scar­bor­ough are ca­pa­ble of pa­trols up to 28 days, with a range of over 3,000 nau­ti­cal miles and a top speed in ex­cess of 25 knots. Each ves­sel has two 7.3 me­tre rigid hull in­flat­able boats that may be de­ployed while un­der­way, for a va­ri­ety of con­stab­u­lary mis­sions.