Page 12 - 2022 - Q2 - Minerva in Focus

SAFETY & SECURITY Safety Digest:

On the rocks!

Figure 1: The general cargo vessel Figure 2: The passage plan took the
aground on the shoal vessel directly over the shoal

The Incident
[occurred onboard a vessel of another company]

A general cargo vessel being navigated using an Electronic Chart on a well-charted and marked shoal. The crew was mustered, but after
Display and Information System (ECDIS) was sailing through coastal an initial assessment of the damage, the vessel's movement on the
waters on a dark night with a following sea. The chief officer (C/O) rocks became so violent that they had to lie on the bridge’s deck.
received a call from a local fishing vessel to warn him he was heading
into shoal waters, which he acknowledged by replying that he was The master informed the local coastguard that he intended to abandon
about to alter course. ship, and within 3 hours, the entire crew had been safely evacuated by
helicopter. The vessel was successfully refloated by salvors after temporary
He then instigated a slight alternation to starboard as per the passage repairs but declared a constructive total loss and subsequently towed to a
plan. Moments later, the vessel came to a juddering stop as it grounded scrapping facility.

Lessons Learned

• It is essential that information is fully assessed before plotting a route and that enough time is allocated for the critical task of
voyage planning.
• The officer conducting the voyage plan should undertake a full check of the route on appropriately-scaled electronic navigation
chart cells before, in most cases, passing it to the master for verification. To supplement the visual checks, all ECDISs have a route
check function, which will highlight any conflicts with charted data.
• It is vital that bridge teams use all available tools to monitor the safe passage of their ship.

12 MINERVA IN FOCUS – ISSUE 20 / Q2 2022 Source: Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB)