RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT 

Five of sev­en crew mem­bers, who were said to be on­board St Vin­cent and the Grenadines car­go ves­sel MV Fair Chance when went it over­turned in wa­ters just off the Bo­cas, Trinidad, are still miss­ing.

Up to last evening, mem­bers of the T&T Coast Guard had been un­suc­cess­ful in their at­tempts to find the miss­ing five crew mem­bers.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the two res­cued crew mem­bers are Vin­cen­tians cur­rent­ly work­ing in Trinidad for a lo­cal con­trac­tor. One of them was iden­ti­fied as Er­ic Cal­liste, who is still miss­ing. The res­cued crew mem­bers re­ceived help short­ly af­ter the in­ci­dent, which oc­curred af­ter 3 pm on Sat­ur­day.

Guardian Me­dia was told that the ves­sel was loaded with steel from the Cari­com port in Port-of-Spain and had just de­part­ed en route to St Vin­cent and the Grenadines when the in­ci­dent hap­pened on Sat­ur­day.

A su­per­vi­sor at the port, who wished to re­main anony­mous, told Guardian Me­dia that it is be­lieved that the ves­sel may have been over­loaded and added that there was spec­u­la­tion that the ves­sel’s ex­tra weight was not prop­er­ly checked by T&T’s Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion’s of­fi­cers be­fore its de­par­ture.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease is­sued by the T&T Coast Guard (TTCG), at about 3.40 pm the TTCG re­ceived a re­port of an over­turned ves­sel with sev­en peo­ple on board some five nau­ti­cal miles North of Monos Is­land.

“The ves­sel named Fair Chance, which is from St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, en­coun­tered rough north coast seas and sub­se­quent­ly over­turned due to a shift of the car­go on board. Two of the sev­en peo­ple on board were res­cued by a pass­ing ves­sel and were hand­ed over to the TTCG and tak­en to Staubles Bay for med­ical treat­ment,” the re­lease stat­ed.

It added that the TTCG has since de­ployed as­sets that are cur­rent­ly in­volved in res­cue op­er­a­tions with the Fair Chance ves­sel.

It was re­port­ed by the St Vin­cent Times that some of the ves­sel’s crew mem­bers were from Union Is­land, Car­ri­a­cou and Grena­da.

On Sat­ur­day night, MP for the South­ern Grenadines, Ter­rance Ol­livierre, told the St Vin­cent Times: “The bot­tom of the boat is on top of the wa­ter, while the top is be­neath the wa­ter. Two sur­vived; I was told they were sit­ting on top of the boat. I was ad­vised they were res­cued by a power­boat from Trinidad that was mak­ing its way down from the To­ba­go keys to Trinidad. The Coast Guard would have been no­ti­fied fol­low­ing the res­cue of the two crew mem­bers”.

The St Vin­cent Times re­port­ed that the cap­tain of the boat is Dex­ter Chance and that the MV Fair Chance is a St Vin­cent and the Grenadines-reg­is­tered ves­sel.