After the last boat registration issue was resolved several months ago, the SLA yacht finally launched with several successful whale charters. Two new areas were identified with large Blue Whale aggregations due the Sri Lanka Aggressors ability to travel hundreds of Nautical Miles over a 7 day charter trip.
The new dispute has arisen over crew competence. The Sri Lanka Aggressor crew is manned by Egyptian and other foreign crew, each with up 5 to 10 years experience and certification in specialized Live-aboard deep sea scuba diving and tourism operations from Egypt, the Maldives and other locations where large 500 to 1000 yacht fleets operate. The Merchant Shipping Secretariat does not recognize selected SLA crew and captains certification and will only accept crew with standard certification needed to man International cargo ships, tankers and freight container ships.
The SLA Yacht deliberately hired 40% Sri Lankans initially and has started to train those local crew with the goal to have a full trained Sri Lankan crew within several years. However the two sides are currently deadlocked, if Merchant Shipping is unwilling to recognize the current specialized and experienced crew, the boat cannot be manned and sailed by a Sri Lankan crew and captain with zero experience in deep scuba sea diving and tourism operations.
An example of the problem is the Merchant Shipping Secretariat has not been able to even help secure the SLA yacht one 5 Star Sri Lankan Chef for the yacht since its arrival in September as in their own words, despite Sri Lanka having an overabundance of 5 Star Restaurant Chefs on the island, none of them have the certification the Merchant Shipping Secretariat requires to allow them on either the SLA yacht or the last Cruise Ship that docked in Colombo that was also desperate for chefs and kitchen staff.
Currently the yacht is down for 3 weeks maintenance and repair after an initial experiment with a Sri Lankan Captain with no passenger experience caused damaged to one side of the yacht. TVB Group management hopes that a settlement can be found in the coming week so no disruption to fully booked charters begin again on the 28th of January this month.
The Sri Lankan Aggressor Yacht is just the first of what could be 50 yacht fleet established in Sri Lanka over the next 5 to 10 years by local Sri Lankan Businessmen similar to the tourist fleets in Egypt, the Maldives and Thailand, that could generate up to 500,000 new hotel room nights, 100’s of domestic charter flights, over half a billion dollars in new tourism revenues per annum and thousands of new tourism related jobs for Sri Lanka.