Passengers aboard the reef tour vessel Cool Runnings were spared the worst fate after the vessel, which was chartered for a boat ride, sank on No Man’s Land in Tobago on Saturday night.
The passengers, however, were rescued by other craft operators and taken to shore. Some said they were told to balance the boat to prevent it from going under.
Efforts to contact Cool Runnings’ manager Ronny Elliott were unsuccessful. However contacted for comment yesterday, president of the Store Bay Reef Tour Association, Michael Frank, told the Express that the vessel had recently undergone repairs. “I know the day before the boat went down they were actually repairing, fixing things,” Frank said.
He also listed the lack of a marina as a contributing factor. “But I blame a lot of this on the system…Tobago has no marina, no place for people to pull up their boats to fix them. You have to keep fixing it in the water, under water, and it’s not very good for the system. It’s not good for the system because you have to use so much chemical underneath to fix and you have to dive to fix it properly.” He said if the manager of Cool Runnings was aware there was a defect with the vessel, then he should not have gone out.
Frank also said that the authorities are not putting anything in place for boats. “How long would we ask for a marina for us to get one,” he added.
Frank said where incidents like what occurred with Cool Runnings unfold, it’s expensive to have the boat brought to shore. “If you try to pull it out on land just to get an excavator on the beach it would cost you about $20,000. Then it would take a next two hours to drag it up on the sand. It is a very expensive process and when you put that boat back in the water, if you hit a stone or any type of thing that cause damage within that time, that means you have to dive under water to see if you can repair it.”
He said without the infrastructure there is too much pressure on operators to get things done.
Tobago House of Assembly (THA) Chief Secretary Farley Augustine previously called on the Government to pass the necessary laws to have the regularising of reef tour operators at the Buccoo Reef Marine Park, as it is only so much the THA could do with the present policies in place.
(Source: Trinidad Express)