prince Harry’s plans for his Caribbean tour went awry today after the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship that is his base for the trip broke down and could not leave port.
The RFA Wave Knight was scheduled to embark from St Vincent on Saturday night, but after developing what was described as a “technical fault” it remained moored in port while engineers worked round the clock to try to fix it.
By midday local time the ship was still not fixed, forcing the royal party into a change of plan.
Instead of setting sail for Grenada, the Prince’s next stop, and pausing halfway to have a picnic lunch on a desert island, as had been planned, the Prince was taken to a small island off the coast of St Vincent in Wave Knight’s tender to have lunch.
If the problem persists, Prince Harry will have to change plans and fly to Grenada instead, almost certainly in a chartered aircraft, and book into hotels rather than sleeping on the ship.
Royal Navy sources said the ship’s bow thruster had developed a fault and there was not a tug available that was big enough to tow the ship out of port. The source said the ship was expected to leave port at 10pm GMT on Sunday or 5PM EST.
The Prince and his entourage had been due to spend Sunday and Monday night aboard the tanker before it returned to duties in the Caribbean.
First Published telegraph.co.uk
