Monthly Safety Scenario

September 2014

Collision caused by confusion

It was around midnight and the officers were
doing the watch handover on the container
vessel, which was sailing outside the Chinese
coast. On the bridge was a Chinese officer who
had signed on in the previous port but there
were also the 3rd and 2nd Officers there. They
were both Filipinos and they carried out the
watch handover in Tagalog. The Chinese officer
did not understand Tagalog so he just familiarised himself with the bridge equipment.

During the handover they discussed the traffic

situation but not the vessel that they would
collide with.
When the handover was finished the Chinese
officer started to ask the Filipino OOW some
questions in English about the bridge equipment
and procedures. This distracted the Filipino OOW
from monitoring the traffic.
At this time the bulker that they were about
to collide with was on the port bow at a range
of 14 miles. The container vessel was crossing the
bulkers track from port to starboard and had a
CPA of more than 1 miles ahead.
A group of fishing vessels was on the port
side of vessel A at a range of 6 miles. The closest
fishing vessel to the container vessels bow had
a CPA of 0.1 mile to starboard. There were two
other fishing vessels in the group with a CPA of
approximately 0.1 mile as per the AIS.
The bulker featured second from the bottom
on the AIS target list. The Filipino officer reduced
the radar range to 6 M and focused his attention
on the fishing vessels. He also did four smaller
alterations of 5 degrees to starboard. The Filipino
officer was concerned about the fishing vessels,
which he told the Chinese officer about.
The Filipino officer had selected AIS input as
determining TCPA and CPA on the radar.

The vessel was in Chinese waters so the Filipino

officer asked the Chinese officer to call the fishing vessels in Mandarin to tell them to stay clear.
The officer on the bulker, who was also Chinese, heard this and called the container vessel in
Chinese over the VHF and asked if the container
vessel could go astern of them. The bulker vessel
was now on the container vessels port bow. The
Filipino did not understand what had been agreed
as the arrangements had been made in Chinese.
The Chinese officer told the Filipino officer, in
English, that the bulker vessel had agreed to a
port-to-port passing. No further explanation was
given. The Filipino officer was still confused and
questioned the Chinese officer if a port-to-port
passing arrangement really had been agreed. The
Chinese officer said yes, but suggested that it
may be better to go astern of the bulker vessel.
A couple of minutes later, the Filipino officer
ordered the lookout to take the wheel and ordered
hard-to-port but changed his mind to steady
and then hard-to-starboard.
The bulker vessel was now very close and
collision could not be avoided as the bulker
vessel struck the container vessel amidships
on the portside.

Monthly Safety Scenario

www.swedishclub.com