Caught in the middle are the Belizean importers and exporters, who depend on the ship's weekly route to and from Jamaica to move their shipments.

The ones feeling the pinch most acutely right now are the Belizean exporters who have 20 containers on board - not the eight we reported last night. Those 20 contain citrus concentrate, shrimps, corn, cornmeal and black-eyed peas.

Almost half of the containers, 9 of them to be exact are being exported by a Mennonite cooperative out of Spanish Lookout, named Bel-Car. CEO Otto Friesen told us that the products they have on the ship are valued at seven hundred thousand dollars. He says his company's buyers are getting impatient, and feed mills in Surinam and Guyana which depend on his corn to feed poultry operations are about to run out of feed. He says if his corn shipment doesn't go through, he'll lose the business. Friesen says if their shipments earn a reputation as being unreliable, his company stands to lose 5 million dollars in sales over the next six months.

Friesen says he's now seeing whether he can re-do another shipment through Miami - even as the pending shipment is stuck on the Palencia. But his case is just one of many others. The agent for the Palencia says there are over a hundred containers now stockpiled at the port in Jamaica awaiting shipment to Belize. The Palencia brings shipments from the far east, EUROPE, the Caribbean and Panama.