New Caribbean ferry service from Tuesday
It’s very expensive to travel throughout the Caribbean by air. A new ferry offers fares which are half that offered by Liat or Caribean Airlines.
In the old days, people travelled throughout the Caribbean by windjammers, small boats with sails, sometimes engines. There were no airlines then and BWIA’s service was very restricted when they began operations almost 70 years ago.
In the 1940s, The MV Silver Arrow was a popular way to travel to Grenada, St Vincent or Barbados, with buckets available for the many who got seasick.
A decade later when the West Indies Federation came into being, there were two boats, the Federal Palm and the Federal Maple, available for inter-island travel. When these boats went out of service, Liat expanded and offered relatively cheap fares.
In the 1990s, a Vincentian company provided an alternative to air travel with the weekly service of a modern vessel, The Windward, which also carried cargo and took Trinidadians and Tobagonians to St Vincent as well as to Margarita. This came to an end seven years ago when the Windward collided with a Coast Guard cutter.
Less than two months after it was announced the launching of a new ferry service to provide sea travel to the islands of the Eastern Caribbean, a Puerto Rico-based ferry company has expressed an interest in expanding to the North-Eastern Caribbean, linking those islands and Puerto Rico to the Dominican Republic.
The company has successfully operated a ferry service between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic for the past 10 years. The service transports 1,150 passengers and 365 vehicles per trip.
President of Caribbean Ferries, Nestor Gonzalez met with St Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister and Current Chairman of the Authority of the OECS, Denzil Douglas during a recent visit to the Municipality of Caguas, a town in Puerto Rico.
Douglas pointed out that inter-island transportation continues to be a major challenge to development in the Caribbean region, and praised the introduction of such a service as a boost for economic activity in the sub-region: “This will increase commercial business between St Kitts and Nevis, the OECS and Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic,” said Douglas, who informed Gonzalez of a similar “inter-Federation service” by the Nevisian Company “Sea Bridge” between Nevis and St Kitts.
Douglas asked the Puerto-Rico-based company to submit the proposal to the OECS Secretariat through the OECS Promotion and Investment Office in Puerto Rico.
This new proposal comes on the heels of a new ferry service to be operated by BEDY Oceanlines which is expected to make its maiden voyage on Tuesday.
BEDY told the media that one ferry will be based in St Vincent and will service the St Vincent to Barbados and St Lucia routes while another ferry will be based in Grenada and will service the Grenada to Trinidad and Barbados route.
The company also plans to expand their operations to other neighbouring Caribbean countries. The proposed launch of the ferry service is being hailed by many as a much-needed boost to the region’s integration process.
With air travel no longer being inexpensive-:it can cost some $2,000 to travel to Barbados and it is cheaper to travel to New York than to Grenada for Christmas- the new ferry service is offering fares that are half the price than what can be obtained from Liat or Caribbean Airlines.