Lady Northcote sailing again

General Manager of the Transport and Harbours Department Marclene Merchant says the Lady Northcote is back in operation and sailed to the North West District event free.

“Lady Northcote departed the Kingston Wharf yesterday (Tuesday) morning at around 10 hrs en route to Port Kaituma, North West District…it was laden with cargo and passengers…it arrived at Port Kaituma around 16:00 hrs event free,” she said, according to a Government Information Agency press release.

On March 10 the vessel caught fire as it neared Port Georgetown. The Captain and crew took quick action and followed the necessary regulations to extinguish the fire that was caused by an oil leak in the vessel’s engine room.

None of the 49 passengers on board were injured but a vehicle that had been parked near to the engine room sustained damage.

Since then the vessel was docked and engineers worked round-the-clock to fix the faults. “The downtime to accommodate repairs resulted in a minor disruption to the department’s schedule which resulted in one return trip being missed,” Merchant acknowledged.

The Lady Northcote is about 70-years-old and is considered the oldest ferry in the T&HD fleet.

The vessel plies the Georgetown-North West, Region One route every fortnight.