Alistair Baillie.co.uk

Over the next few weeks I am going to discuss something that annoys me a lot when at sea… Namely people who do not know the COLREGs / fail to take action and those who use the VHF as a replacement for them.

Firstly as every UK officer is taught “VHF should not be used for collision avoidance” there’s even an MGN (#167) regarding it! For those non nautical readers basically the COLREGs are written in such a way that if everyone follows them it is clear who is responsible for giving way to the other and ships should not collide with each other.

Regrettably as anyone with any experience of time on watch will tell you there is a large number of ships out there who either do not know, or fail to follow the rules.

Situation 1: Overtaking with head on vessels

In this example, Vessel A was heading east in the Rhodes channel, I was approaching her from astern, with the intention of overtaking her – at the present time I was debating whether to take her on her port or starboard side. Vessel C was a Greek ferry proceeding at high speed and planning to overtake me on my starboard side. Vessel B was approaching from the east head on with Vessel A. Expecting Vessel B to goto starboard and pass between the shore and Vessel A, I chose to alter to starboard and overtaking A on her starboard side. Shortly after altering Vessel B called up Vessel A and after switching to another channel eventually (after some discussion between the two vessels) confirmed that they would pass each other port to port (quite why there was a need for this conversation I don’t know since the COLREGs require this maneuver anyway). An approximation of the initial situation is shown in diagram 1.

Vessel B proceeded to alter slightly to starboard and vessel A also altered to starboard as expected. A few minutes later Vessel B proceeded to alter to port – which resulted in a flurry of VHF excitement from vessel A – which went unanswered by vessel B – vessel A then proceeded to go back to port. Vessel B now found herself in a collision situation with myself and the ferry Vessel C which was overtaking me – B then proceeded to go back to starboard and eventually passed 5 cables down my port side and approximately the same distance from Vessel A. An approximation of the eventual situation is shown in diagram 2.

Additional situations will follow over the next few weeks…

So its now 2012 and I have fallen a bit behind with blog updates this year! Hopefully during 2012 I will be a bit more active.

So what happened since the summer? I sailed around the Mediterranean and Aegean Sea quite a lot visiting Turkey, Greece, Israel, Cyprus and the dreaded Egypt. After a 4 month trip I signed off in Limassol, Cyprus and got home to a very chilly Scotland on the 15th December.

This year, after a few more weeks at home I am off to Las Vegas, San Francisco and Hawaii for a 2 week holiday then heading back to sea in February for a short 2 – 3 month contract.

I have now completed the minimum sea time required to be eligible to sit my chief mates examinations and plan to do this during the summer of 2012. The present plan being to return to Warsash Maritime Academy near Southampton and complete NARAS(M) and a few weeks of revision in May.

All going well, I should then be back at sea sometime in August / September.

I thought I should spend a little time describing an incident that occurred during my watch earlier this month.

VTS for those not aware stands for Vessel Traffic Services, of which there are various types; most simply provide navigational advice and assistance and have no legal power whatsoever to direct traffic / tell you what to do, some however do.

On my present ship, we regularly transit an area (twice a week) which has a compulsory VTS reporting and traffic control system – local regulations permit the VTS operators to direct traffic and non compliance with the instructions (without good reason) results in a very large fine. The primary language of the VTS is english, however as its a non english speaking area – they also conduct communications in the native language of the area.

Without naming the area, basically you travel through various sections and will speak to a variety of VTS operators / stations during your transit – the entire thing is also a massive TSS (Traffic Separation Scheme). As a regular visitor we are used to simply calling each section on entering / leaving their area and being told to simply “navigate as necessary”.

The area is extremely busy with lots of crossing ferries, small boats – especially fishing boats and lots of anchored cargo vessels awaiting their transit times who randomly start moving and enter the lanes at the worst possible moment.

However, VTS are generally excellent and if we need to overtake something (which is pretty much at least once an hour given our tight schedule and speed) we simply call up VTS and they either tell us to use the opposite traffic lane / separation zone or tell the other ship(s) to get out the way.

This time however I was on watch and happily proceeding at 18 kts down the traffic lane and as was customary one of the cadets had the con. We observed a ferry was planning to cross the lane from starboard and that she had altered her course to pass astern of a cargo ship which we were 3nm behind and pass ahead of us at just over 1nm with a CPA of 0.8 down the port side.

As she was almost ahead of us, there was a sudden flurry of VHF traffic in the native language of the area – where the name of our ship was mentioned a few times. This was promptly followed by one of the lookouts reporting the ferry, which was now directly ahead of us suddenly altering her course 90 degrees to port aiming directly at us.

At around the same time VTS called up and stated “XXX proceed, ferry on your starboard bow will wait you”… said ferry was now under 1 nm directly in front of us, closing fast and aiming straight for me. The end result being I had to switch to hand steering and put the rudder hard to port – the ferry passed VERY close down the starboard side – exact distance is unknown since ARPA was buggered up by the sudden alteration but she probably passed by around 1 cable.

Now, the important point to note here is that the ferry was already ahead of me and passing well clear at 1nm in front and 8 cables down the port side (which given the situation was more than acceptable) when VTS decided to intervene – they were clearly watching the situation develop so why did they wait so late to intervene? The other point is that the ferry’s watch officer for some reason proceeded to simply obey VTS despite the obvious stupidity of their instruction!

So the lesson to be learned… always think what VTS has instructed you to do – BEFORE you do it!