Chapter 6: Knowledge Base for Master

Junior OOW is to handle one vessel’s situation in 2-4 nautical miles range into 6 minutes before collision situation. Senior OOW is to handle multi vessel’s situation into 3 minutes before collision situation. What happen our last means to avoid the collision “rudder cycling” failed and we are facing a “best aid to avoid the collision” situation or we have to do “rudder cycling” within a narrow channel? We said in last chapter “one minute” is the decisive moment in ship’s handling and when is this minute appear in the middle of our desperate efforts to solve the case? All human’s fear, anxiety, pressure and tension have only one source: uncertainty. We are Captain who been look upon by the crew to handle all risks at sea for them. How can we ignore the call from the duty? Be prepared here as to my best knowledge.   

Human element aspect

After all these years captain life we see us a competent captain. All of a sudden, we found something wrong in our ability we cannot handle current situation. Everybody knows we are human not machine. Actually, we have not some much difference as machine. Our reaction is mostly habitual not rational and more often is emotional. This conclusion based on one observation of our capacity in shirt term memory as figure 2-11 working memory test.

Figure 6-1: Memory structure and their response to pressure

Our pressure comes from many aspects: physical, mental or situational. Seaman’s life is after the cargo. Many cargos are designed to quick turn around to save owner’s money like containers, car carrier, ferry boat and coastal supply vessel. These services may work around the clock cause seaman physical burden on his working abilities. Our mental burden may come from our boss, works, studies or family far away. If we can feel the pressure we can still cope with it by our continuous improvement process. In real case, most amazing thing is “lapse of mind” when everything seems under control. But working procedures is broken due to no consequence action taken due to our procedural memories are lost. The lapse time may be 5 or 10 seconds only. We just go blank at the bridge cannot finish our routine job or totally ignore the possible risk we may face later.  

One experienced Captain disembarked the pilot just before Break water entrance. Mr.  pilot advised captain” there is no vessel inbound. Just turn starboard at break water entrance to align with the outbound channel. Good Bye Captain”. 3/O lead the way down to Mr. Pilot and report his disembark at pilot ladder. Captain replied OK and forgot to turn at break water entrance. After captain miss the turn, captain realized something is wrong. What captain can do in this situation? Should he crash astern not sure where he will end in stopping or full rudder turn inside the harbour area without knowing the turning basin diameter or rudder cycling to slow the speed? There is another break water entrance ahead with smaller channel connecting outside the harbor. Captain succeeded in turning and go through this new break water entrance. But vessel go aground in this channel due to its for fishing boat use with shallow depth to navigate by Cargo ship.       

Vessel go aground while pilot navigate with pilot boat leading the way. Before the turn of the river, pilot give the rudder order “Starboard 15” at 1723 hours UTC and “Hard Starboard”  at 1725 hours UTC according to different wheel over positions.  All of a sudden, pilot found the leading pilot boat did not turning but going straight ahead due to “south cardinal buoy” is drifting to far north position.  Ship’s heading is still 342⁰ degrees(T), not turning yet. Who should be trust at this time? The strait going pilot boat or Mr. pilot himself is correct?  Maybe it is OK to use counter rudder “Hard Port” to stop the turn at 1726 hours UTC.  The starboard turn is checked at 354⁰ degrees(T) at 1727 hours UTC. Vessel go around in next minute. At the bridge the captain and OOW did not response when pilot hesitated at this rudder order. It is quite normal to have “Hard Port” order to stop the turn initialed by “Hard Starboard” rudder. The “Hard Port” is used when the turn is about to finish not before the turning start. No one challenge pilot’s Rudder order. The mystery can be solved by one look at ECDIS and more looks at radar screen as there are no water depth on radar screen. Even OOW or master  or pilot are not standing before these navigation instruments they can check the buoys position and layout outside the window.            

Figure 6-2: Who should be trusted at this time?

All our memories and knowledge, skills and experiences are compressed by pressure we had at that one minutes. Only those most familiar things in our subconscious can work properly without our conscious notice. The actions we take at extreme pressure are our intuition without second thought. In these two chapters to come, captain will feel extreme pressure when reading. It is to cultivate our knowledge, skill and intuition before the real incident when we need it under pressure. Old saying sweating at peace is better than bleeding at war.    

Avoiding ship or avoiding location

We know collision risk is created by two vessel’s speed vectors or course line crossed each other. These cross point of collision risks are concentrated on turning point or entrance of fairway, TSS or land capes. If two vessels happened to arrive same collision position at same time they will collide. In OOW stage, we concentrate to avoid the collision with 3 minutes speed vector which represent the maneuvering of the vessel and allowance for ship’s massive dimensions on Earth. In master stage we need to understand the collision position beforehand even no collision risk is present to avoid unnecessary mental pressure.    

Summary: A UK registered container ship, ran aground on Monggok Sebarok reef in the Singapore Strait on September 2009. It is likely that the master went into a state of shock and reacted instinctively by putting the engine to full astern. While this may be understandable in the circumstances, an effective bridge team would have ensured that the master was prompted to use the grounding checklist.

• The vessel had altered her course to starboard to give way to three vessels exiting Jong Channel.
• This caused her to head towards the reef with the intention of altering course to port and resuming her original planned track after passing astern of the third vessel. 
• Despite warnings from Singapore Vessel Traffic Information System (VTIS), 
  • o   the vessel did not reduce speed or 
  • o   alter course in sufficient time to prevent her from grounding. 
  • Substantial damage was sustained to the fore part of the vessel. However, there were no resulting injuries and no pollution.

The following decisions and actions taken by the bridge team contributed to the vessel running aground:

• •       The movement of the engine telegraph from full ahead manoeuvring to half ahead had no effect on the engine speed; neither the master nor the chief officer appreciated this at the time.
• •       The master’s assessment of the situation and decision to alter course to starboard were based on his observation of true vectors and relative trails of the radar targets; no trial manoeuvres were carried out.
• •       The master and chief officer misinterpreted the information received from VTIS in respect of which three vessels it had referred to.
• •       The master and chief officer became irritated by the frequent interventions by VTIS, which resulted in important information from VTIS being missed.

Figure 6- 3: 11 min. before grounding at 0703 hours, 

If master can handle collision risks with these three vessels by speed vectors the grounding could be solved easily.  In this investigation report, speed vector is not available. We have to solve this case by another way. To avoid the collision ownship have to take care of collision location especially a Master level as captain have to take care distance more precisely than OOW at the time when we react. In figure 6-3, we can see ownship position colored as red arrow head 

At 0703 hours, ownship 257⁰(T) x 20.7 knots just return from opposite lane of TSS.

• •       VTIS called ownship and advised the vessel: ‘Container ship, require you to slow down, require you to slow down. Three ships coming out of the Jong channel’. –
  • o   Good advice as speeding reduced reaction time in all case.
  • •       VTIS also advised ownship to exercise caution, which was acknowledged by the chief officer, and the master set the telegraph to half ahead. –
    • o   expect some minutes passed before engine slow down to “Half ahead”.  
    • •       The vessel’s course and speed over the ground were recorded as 257^o and 20.7 knots respectively.
      • o   General direction of traffic lane is 245⁰ degrees(T). 
      • o   Captain pay no attention to this as he keeps this course for 4 minutes with no intention to steer 245⁰degrees(T). 
      • o   Ownship’s collision position is always on our heading.
      • o   If we heading outside the traffic lane we will have collision point outside the lane. Eventually captain moving his collision point outside the TSS lane.
      • •       The master then began to assess the traffic situation using the vessel’s starboard automatic radar plotting aid (ARPA). 
        • o   Target’s speed vector is not showing because captain did not save VDR data in hard disk.
        • o   Even the ARPA data are saved target’s movement is hard to predict as their speed and course are under continuous change. 
        • o   Once again, what the COLREG asked one to give way and another is to keep speed and course is useless here just like Figure 5-5: collision of VLCS and VLCC in Singapore strait.
        • o   Luckily using relative bearing is still workable in close range as long as we know blossom effect and target’s horizontal angle augmentation. 
        • •       The ARPA was set to display target true vectors with relative trails. 
          • o   Ture vectors to monitor her speed and course over ground is good.
          • o   If ownship knows how to use speed vectors it will help to improve our situational awareness. 
          • o   Relative trails to monitor her past movement especially course altering is good too. 
          • •       He identified three vessels on the starboard bow: the Kota Delima, Bright Pacific and Samho Jewelry, which –were wrong
          • •       he concluded were the vessels referred to by VTIS. 
          • •       Ace Dragon, which was almost right ahead of ownship, was discounted.
            • o   Captain miscount one vessel “Ace Dragon” already inside the west bound traffic lane.
            • o   This could be monitor at ECDIS of target’s AIS signal overlapped.
            • o   Wrongly assuming one vessel “Samho Jewelry “ not intended to leave Singapore as one of the outbound vessels. 
            • o   This is the main reason of his inattention of outbound vessels movement by ARPA. 
            • o   Over reliance of VTIS’s instruction and overlook his own assessment of target’s movement. 

Figure 6- 04: 6 min. before grounding at 0708 hours,

At 0708 hours, ownship 265⁰(T) x 19.1 knots.  we create 6 minutes speed vector of ownship as green line

• •       VTIS called ownship and advised to reduce speed as it was still high and the vessel was about to enter port limits. 
• •       This message was acknowledged by the chief officer, and the master set the engine telegraph to slow ahead. 
• •       Course and speed over the ground were recorded as 265^o and 19.1 knots. 
  • o   Captain is comfortable with this green course 265⁰ degrees(T) to give way to “Kota Delima” which is at ownship’s port bow already.
  • •       The master then ordered a further alteration of course to starboard and steadied the vessel on a course of 273^o.
    • o   This is red course 273^o(T) given to “Bright Pacific” already put ownship in danger after 6 minutes as red speed vector pointed at shallow water.
    • o   This is common practice for junior OOW to go around target vessel at open sea is not suitable for narrow channel.
    • o   Captain may not aware there are shallow water outside the Paula Sebarok island in this moment.
    • o   To make sure ownship’s safety in navigating around the narrow channel are ensured by frequent position fix and predict next turning point correctly.
    • o   Fix ship’s position work is replaced by ECDIS. When everything comes too handy our awareness is lost.  Chief Mate may know ownship’s position and danger by one look but he did not inform Captain of grounding in 6 minutes. Maybe Chief thought Captain can know it by one look too.     
    • o   If go around “Bright Pacific” is necessary, master have to ensure ownship can stop within 6 minutes otherwise ownship will aground.
    • o   After give way to “Kota Delima” ownship should course again slowly by first go around “Kota Delima”stern to course 255⁰ degrees (T) as blue line, then 245⁰ degrees (T) as general direction of traffic lane.
    • o   If we try to sail through “Kota Delima” and the third vessel “Bright Pacific” the distance between these two vessels have to make sure before change course. The distance is one nautical mile.
    • o   “Bright Pacific” is moving out very slowly and his position so close to Sebarok reef is not likely to go to eastbound lane in TSS.