Perishables at sea!
We followed the drama of a car barge stuck at sea on Facebook like many others Sunday, but, while there was fret and worry about the people and the cars, all we could think about was all that stuff from PriceMart and Marina Market thawing in the sun.
The story? The General II ran itself aground on a reef sometime around 4 p.m. Sunday with a full load of vehicles and people.
Other barges, including the massive Mr. B and Capt’n Vic quickly arrived to try to pull the General off the reef, to no avail as passengers followed instructions and put on life vests.
More than two hours later, with the help of the Coast Guard, all passengers were offloaded and taken ashore. Sans their vehicles. The General was finally freed Sometime after 7 p.m.
What a mess for all those people. You’re (thankfully!) dropped off in Cruz Bay. You are either a visitor with no rental vehicle and no luggage and a very anxious villa greeter, or a local with a truck full of kitty litter and rapidly melting frozen goods on a boat you’re no longer on. Not a good evening!
December 6th, 2010 00:39
Thank goodness our flight into STT was delayed otherwise we would have been on that barge. Our villa hostess was releavied it wasn’t us stuck!
December 6th, 2010 02:05
Hope there is no serious damage to the reef.
December 6th, 2010 05:58
Glad i missed that barge coming back…I like getting back EARLY.Glad everyone got back safe.
December 6th, 2010 06:52
Not good no matter how you look at it.
December 6th, 2010 07:19
How many times has this operator (I dare not say “captain”) navigated the channel? Whether it was the 1st try or the 500th, I hope to be reading in “The Source” about the Coast Guard investigating this. All that was lost this was time and groceries this time and we can laugh it off as “well, that’s St John!”. Someone has to be sure there isn’t a next time with worse consequences.
December 6th, 2010 10:08
Huh??? Did someone move the reef??? Sure some folks were delayed or inconvenienced, but the reef will take years to recover…hopefully The General took out some lionfish when it went aground… Please tell us no chickens targeted for the Villa Vittles were aboard!
December 6th, 2010 15:05
FYI: Fracturing is the most successful recolonization technique currently employed by biologists to regrow our two most locally threatened species of coral. I’m not encouraginbg running vessels aground as a sustainably sound practice, but pointing out that maybe less harm was done than one would initially think.
That being said, it is an awefully well marked reef. Surely there’s a story in there somewhere – probably involving a long shift, sleepy eyes and a misplaced elbow….followed by an indecipherable sequence of four lettered words expressed with gestured animation at a high tempo and loud volume.
December 6th, 2010 19:10
I cant believe that running into the reef is in any waya good thing.
December 6th, 2010 23:31
Rum and fruit juice, good; rum and coke, good; rum and car barge? not so good …
December 7th, 2010 09:52
EO,
The process is simple. One healthy coral broken into three small fragments that reattach themselves to existing reef over time (can) become three healthy specimens. Three healthy specimens of a threatened coral is better than one healthy specimen. It’s not nearly as fun, but alas there are some benefits to asexual reproduction.