Correct lights to display at night

[lenseman]

Ahhhh, bet you are over twelve meters and either are, or where MCA coded ;-) When we where coded we should have had them (12.6mts) but the surveyor never really got excited about it

Erm, 15 metres (50 foot) and 25 tons.



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[onesea]

Most ships invariably only drift in open water, clear of obstructions. Nobody in their right mind drifts in either a shipping lane or near an obstruction (floating or otherwise) and without consideration of the effects of wind and current. <Snip>

I agree here but if they are that certain, there is probably no need to be NUC as no one will see it anyway?

I am aware of the difficulties felt by those on small ships with small crews, in the past my posts have been out outspokenly supportive of them...

So just cause a ship has small crew they can turn off lights and go to sleep? I think not.

As I understand the office would probably be more impressed with the master if he slowed down and steamed slowly to his next port saving considerable bunkers as apposed to "hurry up and wait?". I understand many crews and companies adjust vessel speeds for such reasons (slow steaming).

Regardless if the ship's main engines are running or not unless very small there will be some machinery running below. This maybe to keep the lights, a/c, fridges etc working. So unless engine room is certified for such operations it should be manned 24 hours and the ship manned as such.

Given your scenario I suppose that if they have found a large and fast box boat away from a shipping lane they have indeed found a very rare beast! If indeed the engines have been allowed to cool to such an extent that they are going to that long to start then yes maybe then they are " through some exceptional circumstance is unable to manoeuvre " and consider NUC lights to ease the situation.

Although having spoken to a few people who have navigated box boats they seem to be confident that if they see them they will miss them, no need panic to start engines.

If on the other hand they frequently use "NUC" lights to allow them to drift in areas where there are other vessel, it is no "exceptional circumstance" it is routine.

Before you harp on distances giving requirements of day shapes, lights etc can I suggest you look in the rules at the minimum ranges of such lights and signals? etc etc. At what range could you see 2 x 60cm black balls possibly hidden behind a mast/ radar antenna?

Regardless I suspect, if the approaching ship has any sense and sees a ship in open waters moving relatively slowly (underway not making way), they will just tweak the course a couple of degrees, then pass safely by.

Now back to the original quote:

Hmm. Not under command eh.

We sometimes see large cruise ships showing these lights at night off the S Peloponnese. We assume they shut of their main propulsion generators to drift and give their new guests, joined at Athens, a good first night's sleep on the short route to Olympia.

I would be surprised if what you said about manning was true in this case? I suspect they slow steam/ settle on a comfortable heading, is that still NUC?

 

[jrc1983]

So just cause a ship has small crew they can turn off lights and go to sleep? I think not.

The Officer of the Watch is never asleep - the bridge is always manned whenever a vessel is at sea, whether that vessel is NUC or not. This has more to do with shutting down engines to save fuel and allow (daywork) engineers and deck crew to rest.

As I understand the office would probably be more impressed with the master if he slowed down and steamed slowly to his next port saving considerable bunkers as apposed to "hurry up and wait?". I understand many crews and companies adjust vessel speeds for such reasons (slow steaming).

Then you'd be wrong - slow steaming has it's limits, you invariably can't poodle along at less than slow ahead on most ships for any length of time without consequences; usually carbon and potential fuel buildup in the scavenge and turbochargers. Every ship has an 'economical' speed, and if the speed required is less than that they invariably drift. Tankers and bulk carriers also often drift after loading at an offshore terminal; time is money and as soon as loading is complete they're kicked off for the next ship, however they still have to hang around for lab results/paperwork to be ready. Then there are those places where it is too dangerous or impractical to anchor due to depths and the proximity of obstructions, or even port congestion, those reasons also make it undesirable to burn fuel stooging around, usually for an unknown length of time.
Shipping companies are becoming increasingly penny pinching when it comes to fuel, right down to decimal points of a ton. For example Maersk have recently taken several of their container ships into drydock to have their bulbous bows replaced for a design more economical for slower steaming.

Regardless if the ship's main engines are running or not unless very small there will be some machinery running below. This maybe to keep the lights, a/c, fridges etc working. So unless engine room is certified for such operations it should be manned 24 hours and the ship manned as such.

All modern ships (with the exception of passenger ships) are certified to have an unmanned machinery space, this has been the case since the late 1960's. Generators, A/C, fridges, domestic power etc are all left to run automatically, only if something moves outside certain parameters is an alarm sounded and the duty engineer has to drag himself from his bunk downstairs to check it out. That means that the Engineering crowd are dayworkers (normally 8-5, 7 days a week), plus standby's for entering/leaving port and possibly watches when in port.
The nature of ships machinery these days is that to have the Engineers on watches permanently is unsustainable, as the complexity of modern kit requires dayworkers who can devote most of their working day purely to maintenance and inspection, usually in concert with others.

Although having spoken to a few people who have navigated box boats they seem to be confident that if they see them they will miss them, no need panic to start engines.

That would be an assumption and what's to say the chap on the other ship expects both vessels to act as per rule 15/17? There is room for confusion and that confusion is immediately removed (on both sides) when it's identified that a drifting vessel is NUC.

Before you harp on distances giving requirements of day shapes, lights etc can I suggest you look in the rules at the minimum ranges of such lights and signals? etc etc. At what range could you see 2 x 60cm black balls possibly hidden behind a mast/ radar antenna?

I'm well aware of the sizes quoted, but I should point out that this is the age of AIS, and the situation to which I allude is mainly a problem when drifting at night when lights can be seen at a greater distance.

Regardless I suspect, if the approaching ship has any sense and sees a ship in open waters moving relatively slowly (underway not making way), they will just tweak the course a couple of degrees, then pass safely by.

Then you'd be very wrong. The combined advent of GPS and 'red lines' on radars/electronic charts, together with ever increasing reluctance of watchkeepers to stray from their 'red line' invariably means that if you're the stand on vessel more often than not you have to call the give way vessel to do just that. Technology has created a new and particularly dangerous breed of idiot. With most of these people, if the see another ship displaying steaming lights in the situation mentioned then they will do nothing, the result of that is you then engineer the kind of situation I've described.

 

[onesea]

JRC1983

We could probably pick holes all day, regardless of your view 3 things that stand out to me...

1) A ship giving there crew a rest, is not NUC.

2) In the age of AIS it is more likely the OOW's in the given scenario will call each other and agree "Green to Green" or (hopefully) "Red to Red" etc

3) If as a Deck Officer (checked your profile) you are working with such idiots and not teaching them otherwise, can you advise where so I can avoid

 

[jrc1983]

JRC1983

We could probably pick holes all day, regardless of your view 3 things that stand out to me...

1) A ship giving there crew a rest, is not NUC.

It is not, but for a ship drifting (for whatever reason) which does not have 'instant' access to engines then it's safer and invariably ensures improved peace of mind.

2) In the age of AIS it is more likely the OOW's in the given scenario will call each other and agree "Green to Green" or (hopefully) "Red to Red" etc

Don't be so sure, they often don't. I appeared on the bridge one evening to find a Maersk container ship 2.5 miles away on my port side showing a green light and making (according to ARPA) 20+ knots. Our 3/O had done nothing because the other fellow was "give way" and there had been no communication, via ALDIS or VHF, between them. After resolving the situation (going hard over and calling the other ship), I asked our 3/O just when he was actually going to do something whether that be an alteration, calling the other fellow or calling (for example) myself; he couldn't give me an answer, needless to say he was gone at the next port. By the way, the ship I was on was a fully loaded VLCC drawing 21.5 metres with 270,000 tonnes of Iraq's finest onboard.

3) If as a Deck Officer (checked your profile) you are working with such idiots and not teaching them otherwise, can you advise where so I can avoid

Such people don't last long on my ship. As for idiots at sea, well you'll find them everywhere. The only difference these days is that UK colleges are churning them out too.

 

[Uricanejack]

The MN has changed a great deal since my day. When you would regularly sight another Red Duster in most ports. Today it’s a rare sight indeed unless on a yacht. I occasionally see an Douglass I.O.M with a Red Duster. The Crew Indian or East European. Other funny Red Dusters often on mega yachts from little island in the sun I have never heard of.

From time to time I hear young British voices of junior officers on Holland Americas Dam boats or a Princess Menopause Maru.
Often seen tooteling about in English Bay on firework nights or slow running up the straights waiting for Slack a Seymour Narrows.
Never seen an N.U.C light on one yet.
If I did it. I’m sure it would attract significant attention. Serious questions from both Canadian and US authorities along the lines of W.T.F. Despatched assist tugs, helicopters, hover craft and coats guard vessels, requested or not.

What funny flagged vessels crewed by edgits may do in areas where lesair faire is the order of the day does not make it a good practice or good seamanship to show N.U.C just for convenience.

If seen I would of course go round the fool and whinge on and on about the good old days, youth today, modern training schemes and flags of convienience.
I certainly would not be defending the practice.

 

[jrc1983]

The MN has changed a great deal since my day. When you would regularly sight another Red Duster in most ports. Today it’s a rare sight indeed unless on a yacht. I occasionally see an Douglass I.O.M with a Red Duster. The Crew Indian or East European. Other funny Red Dusters often on mega yachts from little island in the sun I have never heard of.

From time to time I hear young British voices of junior officers on Holland Americas Dam boats or a Princess Menopause Maru.
Often seen tooteling about in English Bay on firework nights or slow running up the straights waiting for Slack a Seymour Narrows.
Never seen an N.U.C light on one yet.
If I did it. I’m sure it would attract significant attention. Serious questions from both Canadian and US authorities along the lines of W.T.F. Despatched assist tugs, helicopters, hover craft and coats guard vessels, requested or not.

What funny flagged vessels crewed by edgits may do in areas where lesair faire is the order of the day does not make it a good practice or good seamanship to show N.U.C just for convenience.

If seen I would of course go round the fool and whinge on and on about the good old days, youth today, modern training schemes and flags of convienience.
I certainly would not be defending the practice.

The problem with the good old days was that they were rarely good. Idiots abounded as there was no formal certification structure in place in many countries, or if they did it was possible to buy your ticket and of course port state control didn't really exist at all. Far more people were killed and injured undertaking day to day tasks, ships infested with cockroaches and rats, board of trade feeding scales/Chief Thief's, companies ensuring they kept you onboard for the full duration of articles by avoiding a UK port etc.
Yes there were also lots of plus points, mainly in the direction of paperwork (lack of), social life and time in port, but let's not forget that much of it was bloody grim.

There are plenty of red ensign ships around these days, far more than there has been for many a long year; in fact you only have to glance at the MMSI numbers on an AIS readout to see just how many. The problem is very few of them have any Brits onboard at all.

The latest hot topic in the maritime world is hours of work, or as it's now known, hours of rest. Flag states, port states and companies are merciless in their hounding of those that breach them, yet none are willing to acknowledge the reasons why they are breached. The simple fact is that as the years go on the workload onboard is increasing as crew levels reduce. The ship I'm on these days has a nominal crew of 18, but we can go as low as 12 as per the safe manning document. A ship of the same size and type (20000grt, cargo) from say 40 years ago would have had a crew of between 30 and 40, if you go back 50 years you're looking at knocking on 60 men and if it was an Indian crewed ship you're looking at about 80 souls.
(Remember that British flag ships with foreign ratings had to carry 2 men for every 1 Brit they'd nominally carry).
Anyway, the main reason many ships choose to drift and go NUC is for exactly the reasons I outlined earlier; a means to alleviate potential confusion and secondarily so as not to upset the working regime.
Of course you can say tosh to that, get the engineers down there on watches, engines on immediate notice and to hell with daywork, as we must obey the rules to the letter. That's fine, but that then causes a problem with hours worked and therefore hours rested versus the jobs which have to be done.

As things stand, the modern day Master has two options:

1) Allow the crew to reach their total 'hours' available to work, this can then be resolved by remain alongside or at anchor, something which will be perfectly legal and will no doubt be backed up by his employers company procedures and safety management system. In reality the result is potentially tens of thousands (perhaps more) in extra costs/lost charter fees which will cause a paperwork blizzard between the trinity of owner/charterer/ship, the end result of which is that the Master will not have his contract renewed at the end of that trip and will be out of a job.
Employers can do this easily because almost all modern day seamen are employed via offshore post office box companies where employment law and the respective rights pale into comparison to those provided by British law. Most of these PO box companies are also of a different nationality to the flag state of the ship, further clouding the area.
These days, all companies make a big noise about publicly wanting you to follow 'best practice' (that mythical beast) and all rules and regs, yet privately expect you to routinely ignore them so as to get the job done as on most ships it simply can't be achieved otherwise.

2) Carry on regardless with crew exceeding their hours. If these hours are recorded faithfully in the hours of rest sheet/programme, then the office will pick up on this and the Master will be in trouble with company and perhaps port state and then flag state. If he tries to hide it, then there's a good chance port state control will pick up on this as they regularly cross check hours of rest/log books/planned maintenance records to see if anything has been flogged. Result of all this is that the Master is also out of a job and potentially facing prosecution.

Faced with those two options, which I should emphasise will be dangerously familiar to most modern day Masters, what would you do?

Personally I'm glad I got out of the commercial side of things some years ago and now live something of an easy life with a small 'niche' company where I can happily count the days to retirement.

 

[Uricanejack]

The good old day’s certainly had their lack of charm to. Being older now I get to look back through rose colored glasses selectively picking out the good times.
Or depending upon the conversation can change my perspective to “Be back when I were a lad” “Uphill both there and back”. As I choose. I usually get put in my place by My Father in Law. He can always out do me with the Barron Elgin and Hungry Hogarth’s.
We both had fun though.

 

[michael_w]

Isn't it correct practice to signal "Y" by signal lamp, -.--, Thus advising that the anchor was dragging.