Crowley adding vessel to USVI service

Crowley adding vessel to USVI service Crowley Maritime Corp. said Monday it will add another containership to its U.S. mainland-U.S. Virgin Islands service to meet growing customer demand.
   The Westerland, with a capacity of 502 twenty-foot equivalent units, was scheduled to depart Port Everglades Tuesday January 23 and make its first call at St. Thomas on Friday night, January 26. The vessel will be deployed exclusively between South Florida and St. Thomas, supplementing the existing weekly service that departs Jacksonville on Tuesday, Port Everglades on Thursday and calls St. Thomas every Sunday, with subsequent calls to St. Croix, Trinidad, Barbados, and St. Vincent.
   Crowley also offers service to the islands of Anguilla, Montserrat, Nevis, Saba, St. Barts, St. Eustatius, St. John, St. Kitts, St. Maarten, Tortola, Virgin Gorda, Bermuda, Canouan, Guadeloupe, Martinique and Tobago with feeder services.
   “We added a third vessel to the service in the fourth quarter last year to accommodate the peak season requirements of our customers,” said Rudy Leming, Crowley’s vice president of Caribbean islands services. “We discontinued the additional sailing after the holidays, but demand has remained strong, so we’re bringing in a new ship to keep the service going.
   “What we’ve found is that customers really appreciate the extra weekly vessel capacity and our ability to have their cargo available for pick up on Saturday morning,” he added. “That’s important to grocers, retailers and builders on the island. The supplemental sailing also allows for an earlier arrival to our connecting feeder island services.'