Cruise Incident Avoided

Details

Tourism News

Thursday, 12 November 2009 05:55

By Afeefah Beharry

The local cruise sector almost lost thousands of dollars in revenue Wednesday after the captain of the Carnival Freedom threatened to pull out, citing issues with the Nevis Street pier. Several phone complaints were made to the authorities after people noticed the ship was getting ready to turn away.

President of the Antigua and Barbuda Cruise Tourism Association (ABCTA) Nathan Dundas said the ship was scheduled to dock at the Nevis Street pier, but the captain refused to do so.

“He said the water level was too low for his ship to dock alongside, and that he did not think it was a safe berth for his ship to come in,” Dundas told Caribarena. “Eventually, he decided to turn the ship around to leave Antigua and go to another port of call.”

Dundas said after he was notified about the situation, he called Carnival Cruise Line’s head office in Miami, and they eventually made a conference call to the captain and persuaded him to turn the ship around.

“Eventually he co-operated, and we had the ship placed in a different position, this time at the Heritage Quay dock,” Dundas said.

He described it as a clear case of lack of communication and poor management by the port authority pilots, as they have dealt with larger ships than the Carnival Freedom. “The fact also is, we were able to place another large ship, the Ruby Princess, there and that was supposed to be at Heritage Quay,” the cruise president said.

According to Dundas, there was a delay of up to two hours among all the ships coming in because of what happened.

He has since spoken to officials within the Ministry of Tourism and Manager of the Antigua Port Authority Agatha Dublin about the matter.

“If this Carnival Freedom ship had pulled out today, with all that we are facing with the negativity of Carnival Victory pulling out from next year, it would have had a detrimental effect on our cruise tourism product,” Dundas said.

The ABCTA will be calling for an investigation into the matter.

Meanwhile, the cruise tourism sector enjoyed a bumper day in Antigua with five ships in port. This resulted in about 12,000 visitors to the island.

Besides the Ruby Princess and the Carnival Freedom, there were the Mein Schiff, Sea Princess, and Club Med II. Four were downtown in St John’s, while the Club Med II was at Falmouth Harbour.

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The arrivals were evident, with long lines of traffic on every street in St John's and the hustle and bustle of taxi drivers offering tours.

Dundas expressed his satisfaction with the cruise calls, and said it was good for Antigua & Barbuda and important for the country to continue receiving those calls. Another new cruise ship, Mercury, from Celebrity Cruise Line, will drop anchor on Monday.

 

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