Carnival Valor and tourism dollars say goodbye
John Flowers
The tourism industry is in its low season so you would think that every visitor counts. But due to a major slippage at the Port today, thousands of visitors stayed away from Belizean shores. And what should have been a busy day for cruise tourism instead turned out to be a complete bust when the cruise ship Carnival Valor was forced to make its way into Mexican waters instead of the scheduled Belize stop. The vessel, which arrived near the mouth of the English Caye Channel early this morning, remained offshore for several hours awaiting a local marine pilot to board and steer it through the narrow passage as required by the Merchant and Shipping Act. When the marine pilot, who is contracted by Ports of Belize Limited, failed to board the cruise ship a decision had to be taken. Despite receiving clearance from Ports Commissioner John Flowers, the captain onboard Carnival Valor chose not to take the risk of guiding and docking the ship without a pilot. Instead he opted to continue the voyage to Cozumel. Aside from the thousands who didn’t experience the Jewel, scores of tour operators and vendors at the Fort Street Tourism Village were left without work for the day. News Five spoke with Flowers who said the Belize Ports Authority is conducting an investigation into the matter.
Major John Flowers, Ports Commissioner
“Early this morning I got a call about a little after four, minutes to five, saying that they are having some difficulty with the marine pilot not boarding the Carnival Valor at the pilot station. So I was asked if I was able to give a waiver for the ship to proceed into the harbor on its own. Considering the issue that the problem that a ship not arriving into harbor would cause I decided that given the fact that the pilot, that that ship had come to Belize several times would have been capable of bringing the ship safely into harbor. I had given the approval for a waiver for him to come into the Belize City harbor. However, at about five-thirty thereabout I received a call again from my officers saying that the captain had decided that he would not proceed up into the channel on its own and would abort and head back up into Cozumel. And so the authority hadn’t had any information as to why that was so. And so arriving at work around seven-thirty this morning we started to try to find answers to the question as to why the ship actually aborted its cruise day. And so since eight or a little after eight this morning we have been out trying to get answers. We visited the Port of Belize Limited which is the port that provides the marine pilot for this specific area and for that particular ship. We were told that the vessel left but the sea state was such that it wasn’t able to get there. We have not been able to verify any of that story yet. We’ve also called for a meeting with the EuroCaribe team, the operations people, and they turned up. We had a meeting at nine o’clock this morning and we went through some of the issues that we believe, that we felt contribute to that. They were looking at sea state at probably the standard operating procedure for the ship given the high wind and sea state but there were no way we could have got all the information there so we are still trying to verify and establish what went wrong.”
Flowers says it is too early to determine what measures, if any, will be taken against those responsible for the slippage. He said an ongoing investigation into the matter will have to take into consideration current winds and sea state. Flowers also mentioned that it would be premature to determine a dollar amount in revenue loss from today’s mishap. Port of Belize did not wish to comment on the incident.
It was stupid to privatize the ports and related functions that are critical to the whole country.
Ownership and control of the ports must be returned to the people of Belize, so they are not held hostage by one man or one company.
This is truely bad news for Belize, belize really is dependable on foreign dollars and this kind of situation only leaves one frustrated and pennyless.
what a dirty DISGRACE O BELIZE MY BELIZE
WHERE ARE WE HEADING
LORD HELP US
The actions of one affect many. Even if the pilot was sick, he should have called in so that some one else could take his place. Flowers from the Port Authority has to take the blame but he should put measures to ensure that we “always” have a back up. Shame that it always takes an incident to happen for us to make changes
This is a two sided sword situation. If they had sent the pilot boat out and someone died as a result of the bad weather then the Port would be blame for their carelessness. I know things are hard but you cant put a price on peoples life. Port had nothing to gain by not sending the Pilots out.
In this situation does not matter who owns the port a decisions would have had to made for the good of the workers.
hOPE THE CRUISE SHIP COMEBACK NEXT TIME OR ELSE LOTS OF FAMILIES WILL FEEL THE PINCH OF THIS LOSS AGAIN. LETS HOPE THINGS GET BETTER BECAUSE THESE PEOPLE WOULD SPREAD THE WORD OF THE LACK OF UNPROFESSIONALISM AND IRRESPONSABILITY THAT THEY SHOWED YESTERDAY.
HEADS SHOULD ROLL………
As someone who is at sea on a daily basis I 100% agree with the decision of the Port. Those of you who do tours on the mainland and so forth cannot understand the level of risk involved when you have wind speeds above 20mph and the size of waves it brings with it.
Yes it didnt make many dollars but life is more important than money. There are many times that we have to cancel our Blue Hole trips and err on the side of safety… Of course we hate it cause then that means we wont make that pretty penny but at least we are safe and so are our clients. MONEY IS NOT EVERYTHING…. Human life and safety is and should always be first.
They havent been able to verify if its true that the sea state was bad? WTF peel open unu eye man…
Belize is slowly but surely loosing its capacity to compete with other carribean countries for the tourist dollars. How can a country be so unashamed of their incompetence. It is time for Belizeans to move into the twenty first century. The country cannot continue with an “oh well” attitude. The country is imploding from the inside, it needs no outside enemy to destroy it.
What happened to the previous Ports Commissioner. Major Jones was very competent, and helped to prosecute several ships that messed up our reef, millions won in judgment. WHere is Major Jones? what is the new commissioner’s qualification? this man needs to go.
I work for RCCL and I know that they have significantly cut back their ships visiting Belize. If we let Carnival and NCL go elsewhere, then we will have just ourselves to blame for letting another industry toself implode. With no accountability and “ho-hum” attitudes the future looks likes gangs and crime as our major industry!
Al the people in belize is already distroying them self know body have to do it 4 them look at all the killin that goes on there
Emily, you should read your comments before you post. That is a very stupid comment you posted there. You must be one of them Belizeans weh gone live da di great USA and forget weh u come from.
This is one minor incident , no lives were lost let us not make a big deal out of nothing.
Look everyone, everything in this life happens for a reason. Loosing a cruise ship of passengers to vendors, tour operators and Belize’s economy may seems like a major loss of income, but who really can tell the other outcome if the cruise had tried to dock on its own? Yes, it is true, Belize is not prepared for many of the challenges we faced today. In the past we did not have leaders that were looking beyond. Sad but true.