arrived in Dockyard yesterday, bringing a life-line of fresh water.

It took the Singapore-registered tanker two days to sail from Philadelphia with her load of 2.5 million gallons of water.

She is expected to stay for around three days depending on how quickly the water can be offloaded.

Before Philadelphia, her last port of call was Guatemala, but she is expected to repeat the voyage back to Philadelphia with her Indian crew.

It took two tugboats to push the heavy tanker to land yesterday.

Just before 5 p.m. the and left Dockyard to collect the mammoth tanker.

?She is very low in the water,? tug captain Roy K. Todd said. ?It makes her harder to bring in because she can sheer.?

The attached two lines at the bow, as the attached two more six inch lines to her stern.

A Bermudian pilot on the bridge of the choreographed the two tugs to bring her in safely.

?There are currents so you have to make sure to go in parallel or else,? Capt. Todd said. ?At the stern it sucks you in, but at the bow it blows you out.?

Capt. Todd said he brought in the Bacardi-operated rum ship, the into Dockyard in 1990. By 5.30 p.m the was safely attached to the commercial dock, where representatives of the Ministry of Works and Engineering and the Department of Health were ready to take the operation over.

The nozzles of three hoses lay on the dock, leading to two large tanks in the Dockyard.

A road past Clocktower mall was temporarily blocked off in order to allow the water pipes free access.

Principal engineer at the Prospect Reverse Osmosis Plant, Steve McMinn, oversaw the water transfer.

He said one of the hoses would be used to fill a tank for the West End Development Company, which would be used to service the Westgate Correctional Facility.

However, the rest of the water would go into a separate tank for Government use and this water would be distributed around the Island. It was not expected to take long to pump the water off the ship, he said, but it would take much longer to distribute the water around the Island.

Should the second tank overflow, water trucks would run 24 hours a day to disperse the water around the Island.

And it was also a slight possibility that some of the Government water at Dockyard could be pumped through pipes to drier parts of the Island.

As the crew worked hard to get the water out of the ship, onlookers looked on and shouted encouragement.

?Can I get a free load of water?? a passer-by asked. ?I am almost out of water.?

A large crane onboard the ship lifted the three giant hoses 20 feet up in the air to be connected to the ship-board pump.

However, the nozzles of the rubber pipe were too short to reach and large sections of pipe had to be cut off and fused together again. At 6.30 p.m. a team from the Health Department began testing samples of water onboard.

The has 22 onboard tanks and the Department of Health tested in various locations. However, by 7 p.m. a Health Department spokesman said the tests were good and the water was clean.

The Captain of the said it was company policy not to comment to the Press.