Preface. 

Have you ever seen the color of the sea in the deep ocean out of nowhere? Sailing at sea is a fancy career, and navigational watchkeeping could be a romantic encounter with all the wonders of nature from the universe around the Earth. You can recognize Vega and Sirius from their constellations at night and see the brightest morning star inside the sextant, shining with a light and color no diamond—not even your wedding one—has ever shed.

But all these fantasies will come to a sudden end once a collision happens, or when you are suffering from heavy mental stress with those ferocious and daring fishing boats trying to cross your bow without any fear, just because you are a novice or do not have enough skills to handle these situations.

You may have a proper lookout who can help you identify the nearest vessel with his bare eyes. You wonder why he can do this but are not brave enough to ask him how he did it. The target he points out may not be the one you thought was on the ARPA screen or the one with the collision alarm. Who knows how long he had been looking at this target and why he told you just now? You need to take at least three more minutes to make a positive identification of the target, either through the ARPA or visual skills. Your ARPA and radar are set up properly for your preferences to suit your skill level. The machinery can help pick out risky targets in ample time, but you still worry that a second-priority target has not passed safely in close range. Is it possible this collision alarm confused the priority of danger, which caused the double grounding in the Singapore Strait? You know the importance of taking early action for collision risk and are not foolish enough to ignore that changing the heading drastically may involve a collision risk with a third target. Looking out the windows, these vessels are just outnumbering your skills to handle. Could you find the proper help you need? Are you hesitating to get help from the Master?

You are in a two-OOW situation and taking over the watch now. According to Bridge Procedures, your job function as a junior OOW is to fix the ship’s position, communicate with the Engine Room, or contact the VTS station. But some day later, you will be the senior OOW, whose job function in a dual-OOW watch is simply to “look out of the damn window.” What to look for and how to look out? You will need a learning process to acquire the necessary skills.

Your learning process goes hand in hand with the daily watches you take for a living. Are you happy so far? Nothing serious has happened, and everybody is helping you well. Who can guarantee you will always have this luck? Some captains have argued about the concepts in this book against their 30 years of sea experience. Near-miss cases are used to create our mental models here. With selected long-term memory, a captain can appraise the situation, identify risk, and take action immediately. Still, there may be some situations that have never come to their mind.

“Once in the UK, a small aircraft pilot with nowhere to land survived an engine failure by flaring his plane into a stall (losing speed so as to fall vertically from the sky) and landing in the tops of trees. He later reported that he got the idea from a fictional Biggles story (by Captain W.E. Johns, published in the 1930s) he had read years before!” This latent memory sank into his long-term memory and was aroused by a situation he had never thought of before. This inspiration comes from his subconscious.

The importance of reading this book is to absorb the environmental parameters you had not noticed before and create your own awareness inside the case studies to form part of your skills for later usage. Intuition is for something we have never met before but may have some inherent connections to your current situation. It’s a dynamic process, back and forth, in practicing mental models’ knowledge and cultivating our skills. It is not just for your personal interest. Whether you only want to acquire the minimum knowledge and skills for the job or you want to be second to none, you will need this book at hand.

I went to sea with great passion and suffered a great deal of stress in my early days. The mental models and case studies explained here are my research into collisions, and I found no suitable guidance in current publications that followed the systematic approach I had taken. I am not a professional as you are now. You have the privilege to examine all these assumptions I made (although I do believe it’s the right thing to do) by your daily watches, and you are the judge of its correctness. This book has been rewritten over 20 years to change its orientation from knowledge-based to skill-based, and finally to situational-based. I have not hidden the stories behind the important principles if I knew something might be good for you too. I hope you enjoy the reading and get the best of it from the beginning.

Summary

Collision scenarios change constantly. Most occur invisibly or beyond our awareness. We fail to notice when situations shift from danger to safety, or vice versa. When collisions happen, we feel shocked. No collision is planned beforehand. This simple truth reveals our blindness to collision causes, which we classify as the human element. But how well do we understand the human element?

This chapter distinguishes between STCW requirements (Knowledge/Understanding/Proficiency) and what I believe is more appropriate for shipboard reality: Knowledge/Skill/Intuition. We face limitations in Knowledge/Skill/Intuition aboard ship. Human element details appear in another book of mine (still in progress). However, this book fully applies human element principles to Bridge Human Resource Management (BHRM).        

Chapter 1: Knowledge and Situational Awareness for Rating

• Knowledge, feeling and instinct for Rating: Visual Lookout
• Visual Lookout on bearing: Aspect, relative bearing, line of sight Visual Lookout on bearing:
• Visual Lookout on distance: Horizon, bow wave and wake current
• Nightfall at sea: Limitations, illusions, deceptions,
• Situational Awareness for Rating: Report Visual Contact
• Situational Awareness: Anxiety of collision
• Situational Feelings: Persuasion formula
• Situational Instincts: Defer to Authority

Chapter 2: Knowledge Base for Junior Officer

2-01 Situational awareness of small vessel Visual lookout

2-02 Situational awareness of Ocean going vessel

2-03 Situational awareness of ARPA/ECDIS/AIS/VHF

2-04 COLREG Part A- General (Rules 1-3)

2-05 COLREG Part B- Steering and Sailing (Rules 4-19)

2-06 Horizontal Bearing consideration

2-07 Vessel’s obligation varied by COLREG, VHF, VTS or Pilots

Chapter 3: Situational Awareness for Junior Officer

3-01 Radar lookout basic: collision point, line and area

3-02 Fear comes from uncertainty

3-03 Crossing vessel’s COLREG situations

3-04 Comparison of radar and visual lookout

3-05 Last mile in Sanchi radar lookout

3-06 Situational awareness of Crash Astern

3-07 Force Majeure in shiphandling

3-08 Touch soft spot of his subconscious: Assertiveness

3-09 Resources management of Radar lookout

3-10 Blind sailing’s help: AIS

3-11 What you are doing without knowing

Advancing to the Senior Officer Level: Mastery of Interaction

Once the foundational knowledge of the first BHRM volume is mastered, a mariner is generally capable of basic collision avoidance. However, at the Senior Officer (SO) level, the focus must shift toward the nuances of own-ship maneuvering characteristics—specifically turning circles and stopping distances—and the complex interactions with other vessels regarding time and space.

After years of service as a JO, an officer’s lookout procedures have become deeply ingrained. Yet, if the core principles of those procedures were never fully understood or have been forgotten, they become subject to unconscious bias. At the SO level, the primary human error is the Slip, which originates from a failure of attention rather than a lack of knowledge.

To combat this, the second part of the BHRM series introduces advanced graphical awareness tools designed for the "Fast Brain" (subconscious intuition). These tools prevent the "Lapse of Mind" that occurs when digital data overflows the "Slow Brain" (short-term memory). By using graphical representations of risk, the SO can maintain situational awareness even when the cognitive workload is high.

The Master’s Domain: Restricted Waters and Fluency

For the Chief Mate or Master operating in coastal and restricted waterways, the luxury of time and space evaporates. These environments demand more stringent discipline and rigorous criteria for every action. The visual and radar skills learned at the OOW level must now be blended into a smooth and fluent execution.

At this advanced stage, we often operate beyond what the COLREGs can strictly regulate, though the legal obligation to avoid collision remains absolute. The "Best Aid to Collision Avoidance" introduced in this section presents a different perspective than the one a JO uses in the open sea. When faced with the struggle of "What to do?", the Master must rely on a higher level of professional judgment.

Chapters 4 and 5 of this second volume provide critical strategies for managing multiple-ship meeting situations, where the complexity of the encounter tests the limits of traditional avoidance and requires a more sophisticated, team-based approach.

Chapter 4: Knowledge Base for Chief Officer

4 – 01 Radar Setting skills on board

4 – 02 Three stages of vessel turning: space ship status

4 – 03 Avoidance actions consideration in Senior stage

4 – 04 More visual skill: Knowing bearing change, CPA and SRB

4 – 05 Safe Relative Bearing SRB in crossing vessels

4 – 06 More thoughts of Collision case in Dover strait

Chapter 5- Situational Awareness for Chief Officer

5 – 01 Dover Strait: Container ship collided with cruiser 1999

5 – 02 Best aid to avoid collision in advance

5 – 03 Singapore Strait: maritime bunker conflict zone

5 – 04 BRM, HELM or BHRM

5 – 05 Chang-Jiang Mouth new rising maritime conflict zone

5 – 06 Master has only one-minute time to decide his fate

The Master’s Command: The "One-Minute" Reality and Strategic Foresight

Upon promotion to Master, the dual threats of grounding and collision become the primary risks to a captain’s career. While a Junior or Senior Officer focuses on the "Collision Point" as a simple target to avoid, the Master must operate within a much tighter and more complex framework.

In command, you often have only one minute to decide your fate. This "Golden Minute" requires a Master to:

• Integrate Depth and Distance: Instantly assess the Collision Point in relation to surrounding water depths to avoid grounding while maneuvering away from another vessel.
• Rapid Situational Appraisal: Analyze collision risks within seconds, particularly when summoned to the bridge at the last moment during a night watch.
• Manage Multi-Target Complexity: Assess and avoid multiple targets simultaneously within the confined space of a busy waterway.
• Determine the "Best Aid": Identify the most effective maneuver when both vessels are already actively maneuvering in close quarters.

These are the components of Emergency Awareness. They represent our last resort for solving the dynamic risks we face daily. There is an old saying: "The apple falls not far from the tree." Is it the tree's fault that the apple falls? Likewise, can we blame a Captain who does his absolute best but fails to prevent a disaster in that final, desperate minute? In Chinese culture, it is said: "The General dies on the battlefield, and the water jug breaks at the well." We do not want to rely on battle-ground intuition as our only solution. We must ask: How did we allow the situation to become so critical in the first place?

The Power of Static Awareness: Voyage Planning

The most valuable asset a Captain possesses is the ability to foresee collision risks through a paper chart or ECDIS long before the ship even sails. This is Static Awareness.

The majority of emergency cases can be drastically reduced through meticulous Voyage Planning. By strategically arranging course lines and turning points, a Master can create the "cheapest" and safest solution to collision avoidance. Even a Junior Officer who lacks advanced lookout skills will benefit from a well-planned route, as it inherently reduces the frequency and complexity of close-quarters encounters.

This proactive approach—solving the collision before the vessel even reaches the danger zone—is the core focus of Chapters 6 and 7 (the third part of the BHRM series). We move from reactive intuition to strategic prevention.

Chapter 6: Knowledge Base for Master

6 – 01 Grounding with no collision risk: Add one more effort in your routine

6 – 02 Grounding with collision risk: change situation from danger to safe

6 – 03 Collision position Study

6 – 04 Visual skill for Master

6 – 05 Best aide to collision avoidance

6 – 06 Emergency maneuvering to collision avoidance

6 – 07 Multi targets situation in confined waterways

6 – 08 Narrow channel sailing rules

Chapter 7: Voyage Planning for Master

7 – 01 All vessels at sea have to alter course to starboard side

7 – 02 BRM or HELM in collision avoidance

7 – 03 Some operational considerations in collision avoidance

7 – 04 Some legal considerations in collision avoidance

7 – 05 Defensive Navigation in Narrow Channel

7 – 06 Defensive Navigation inside Traffic Separation Scheme

Level 4: Bridge Teamwork and the Cultivation of Command Instinct

A Master requires a refined instinct to preserve cognitive capacity and save precious seconds under pressure. However, true instinct cannot be forged through routine, incident-free navigation; it must be developed through Navigation Exercises. These exercises serve as the ultimate test of a bridge team’s ability to apply new procedures and heightened awareness to real-world complexities. As a vessel moves, the situation evolves minute by minute; the team must constantly re-evaluate the scenario, layering their collective knowledge and skills to stay ahead of the risk.

Overcoming the "Lapse of Mind" and High-Pressure Syndrome

Even the most experienced Master is susceptible to a "Lapse of Mind"—a state where memory is momentarily lost or where one becomes stubbornly fixated on an incorrect procedure. This is often exacerbated by the physiological effects of extreme stress, or what we call "High Blood Pressure Syndrome."

To safeguard against these cognitive failures, we utilize "Tags"—mental triggers and procedural cues designed to stimulate memory and restore situational awareness during moments of distraction or "absence of mind."

Navigating Cultural and Team Dynamics

In the modern maritime era, bridge teams are increasingly multi-national. Effective Bridge Human Resource Management (BHRM) requires more than just technical skill; it requires the ability to overcome cultural barriers. This final part of the BHRM series integrates the study of the human element to master:

• Cross-Cultural Communication: Bridging the gap between different linguistic and social backgrounds.
• Assertiveness vs. Deference: Encouraging junior officers to speak up while maintaining the Master’s ultimate authority.
• Cross-Referencing: Using the team to verify data and catch individual slips or mistakes.
• Persuasion and Leadership: Directing the team’s "mental energy" toward a shared goal.

The Forging of Instinct

The reader will need great patience and discipline as they work through the final chapters. The case studies presented here are not just stories; they are the "forge" in which your professional instinct is shaped. By analyzing these norms and outcomes, you will develop the ability to react correctly without conscious deliberation.

This process—the cultivation of the Master’s instinct through rigorous simulation and human element analysis—is the focus of Chapters 8 and 9 (the fourth and final part of BHRM).

Chapter 8: Situational Awareness for Master

8 – 01 Background story of Simulator exercises

8 – 02 Collision Awareness Exercise – 01 Safe Speed

8 – 03 Collision Awareness Exercise – 02 Collision area risk awareness

8 – 04 Collision Awareness Exercise – 03 Safe Heading

8 – 05 Collision Awareness Exercise – 04 Speed up option

8 – 06 Collision Awareness Exercise – 05 Control turning rate

8 – 07 Collision Awareness Exercise – 06 General traffic direction

8 – 08 Collision Awareness Exercise – 07 Avoid overtaking vessel

8 – 09 Collision Awareness Exercise – 08 Speed reducing rate

8 – 10 Collision Awareness Exercise – 09 Full Rudder used

8 – 11 Collision Awareness Exercise – 10 Rudder Cycling

Chapter 9: Situational Awareness for Master

9 – 01 Collision Awareness Exercise – 11 Visual Lookout

9 – 02 Collision Awareness Exercise – 12 Observing collision line risk

9 – 03 Collision Awareness Exercise – 13 Leave collision area

9 – 04 Collision Awareness Exercise – 14 Simplify the Challenge

9 – 05 Collision Awareness Exercise – 15 Lost Heading Control

9 – 06 Collision Awareness Exercise – 16 Overall Situation Awareness

9 – 07 Collision Awareness Exercise – 17 Maneuver Speed Vector

9 – 08 Collision Awareness Exercise – 18 Accelerated turning

9 – 09 Collision Awareness Exercise – 19 Nice and Easy

9 – 10 Collision Awareness Exercise – 20 Lost Steerage

9 – 11 Collision Awareness Exercise – 21 7 vessels in Collision Area

9 – 12 Collision Awareness Exercise – 22 3 minutes collision warning

9 – 13 Collision Awareness Exercise – 23 Reduce speed effectively

9 – 14 Collision Awareness Exercise – 24 3 minutes safety margin

9 – 15 Collision Awareness Exercise – 25 10 degrees to starboard

9 – 16 Collision Awareness Exercise – 26 Situations report format

9 – 17 Collision Awareness Exercise – 27 Swansong for MORIE