Case Study Vessel Contact/VDR Analysis

A VDR Analysis of an incident can often uncover hitherto unknown & sometimes unpleasant facts especially when we carry out an Incident Investigation. 

As a Maritime Service Provider that also Investigates Navigation Incidents, we use technology in a manner that can easily uncover the facts, trends and shortcomings.

More often than not, most navigational incidents are a combination of a series of errors, disorientation, sometimes complacency and sometimes simple neglect of the warning signs and absence or disregard of passage planning safe-guards. The incident in itself, if you are lucky could be a near-miss, or for worse a contact with other vessels, running aground, and damage to property and structures.

Take our Case Study Challenge

This involves berthing a vessel, in a space of approx. 1.2 times of ship’s length, in between two other vessels in a narrow and shallow river basin. With a passage surrounded by shallow patches, in a constrained channel, with strong winds having at your disposal tugs, a Pilot onboard, what would you do as master of the vessel?

• Use a pilot surely to have better knowledge of the local depths. Mostly this is compulsory today.
• How cautious would you be, if this was your first call to this Port? What factors do you look into, where do you draw a line between being confident vs. Cautious, to have a dynamic evaluation of the situation as it develops?
• Would you continue to trust the judgement of an experienced senior Pilot all the way or differentiate between Conn and Command at some stage? When do you draw that diffferentiation?

Can a poor combination of the above result in a vessel proceeding at high speed, resulting in the vessel overshooting a berth, a collision/grounding, or does it all come down to a chance, being confident that nothing will go wrong, and when it does go wrong how adept are you with controlling the situation.

Pre-information that you have

Master and the bridge team, as well as the vessel are calling the port for the first time.

You've insufficient information regarding the berth.

Due to shallow waters, taking into account UKC, your passage is built upon say for example an 8 kts speed, but the Pilot wants to go higher.

There is a favorable 2-3 Kts tidal stream (flooding tide) and beam wind, Force 3, gusting to Force 5 closer to the berth.The passage, so far that you could foresee involves sharp turns.

In this case study....

Passage Risk appraisal conducted with Sea pilot that involved Some discussion but not much between the bridge team, Master-Pilot Exchange, if any was unheard by the other members of Bridge Team. No contingencies discussed. Tugs discussed very briefly.

1.   What do you think finally happened?

2.   What do you think is wrong here?

Well to get you thinking quite a few things went wrong. Feel free to ping us on the incident takeaways. It did highlight contributory factors, much larger than a simple miscalculation.

At Ingenium we take pride in carrying out the most comprehensive Navigation Incident Analysis. We analyse the VDR data and give you the most factually driven recount of an incident and we bring up the contributory factors like no other.

However we do not stop there, we integrate all of these learnings into our approach to routine VDR audits. We believe that VDR audits can be an effective tool to identify weak areas, drive a behavioural change and actually act as a preventive tool. We can work out your complete navigation safety strategy by combining industry learnings, best practices, and audits and investigation to work with your crew to get you the desired outcome.

For enquires on Remote VDR Audits and Incident Investigations from Experienced Professionals, write to us: [email protected] or [email protected]. Wish you safe seas and safe passages. Do remember the mask, the hygiene and social distancing measures in these times of COVID-19.