The long-awaited arrival of the M\/V Luta to the CNMI is finally happening this week.<\/p>\n
Lt. Gov. Victor Hocog said the ship, a retrofitted passenger and cargo vessel, will be arriving on Rota tomorrow, Thursday.<\/p>\n
Hocog said the ship, which originally came from Louisiana and last docked in Panama, should be very close to Saipan, somewhere near Pagan. <\/p>\n
He added that M\/V Luta also needed to stop by Marshall Islands to bring in one of the crew for medical attention, spending a day. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s quite faster than we expected,\u201d Hocog said regarding the last leg of the trip.<\/p>\n
The arrival of M\/V Luta has been pushed back for several months now since it was said to set sail last April due to certification requirements and modifications made to the ship.<\/p>\n
Hocog said U.S Coast Guard requirements had to be followed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not something that when you say, you\u2019ll buy something, it\u2019s going to be here,\u201d Hocog said, \u201cWe had to follow a lot of regulations because the vessel is U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hocog said they will have a Christening ceremony on Rota this Saturday where the M\/V Luta will be home-ported and they are also planning to have an open house for the ship on Saipan.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter that it\u2019s ready to carry cargo and passengers,\u201d Hocog said.<\/p>\n
In September 2014, Japanese businessman Takahisa Yamamoto invested about $1.6 million in the retrofitted cargo and passenger ship that will bring passengers, agricultural goods, and other consumer items to and from Rota, Saipan, Tinian, the Northern Islands, and Guam.<\/p>\n
Yamamoto, from Osaka, Japan, owns Luta Mermaid LLC, the main business of which is to operate M\/V Luta.<\/p>\n
The 150-foot-long, 500-ton cargo ship was in Louisiana to obtain a certificate of inspection from the U.S. Coast Guard. The ship can accommodate 18 passengers and can carry up to 28 20-foot containers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The long-awaited arrival of the M\/V Luta to the CNMI is finally happening this week….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[328,1426,3482,8928],"class_list":["post-223180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-coast-guard","tag-panama","tag-takahisa-yamamoto","tag-victor-hocog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}