Russian captain blames “Unsafe UK shipping conditions”

duncan99210 said:
There’s no foul ground in the area marked on the charts. The Russian captain is laying a smoke screen to cover his own incompetence... Remember this ship has previous form, having only just been released from detention in the Netherlands having taken 7 months to complete repairs.
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Surely that is the point the captain is making - the ground was foul but not marked as such on the chart. So you are agreeing with him.
 
Uricanejack said:
dom said:
Okay, running aground is bad nav, or bad luck.

Can anyone throw any light on the accusation here that the UK Coastguard failed to warn against a supposed chain, which supposedly caused this ship to ground?

No light. Just a wild guess which could be entirely wrong.

First a certain amount of information may have been lost or added due to language differences. This was then translated by a journalist who knows little or nothing about the topic. So what was the Russian Captain actually talking about?

Think about what would you do if you were.
At anchor and the wind picked up?
You Started dragging your anchor?

One might expect Russian cargo ships to do much the same.

What did he mean by the Chain?
Could be his own anchor chain?

Or could it be they tried to raise thier anchor and found it had fouled an old chain?
Which would of course complicate the issue. just a wild guess. Based on not being able to think of any other reason for another unknown chain to have been involved
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Here's the ship's track in the hours/minutes leading up to the grounding. I don't know what the timescale was.
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Interesting track.

Wind direction appears to have been S’ly.

Apparently not just a simple wind came up and vessel dragged down wind to shore.
There looks like at least 3 occasions where the vessel gained ground into the wind.
Attempts to re anchor? Each subsequent attempt closer to shore?
Why would you do that?

Some other problems?
 
Uricanejack said:
Interesting track.

Wind direction appears to have been S’ly.

Apparently not just a simple wind came up and vessel dragged down wind to shore.
There looks like at least 3 occasions where the vessel gained ground into the wind.
Attempts to re anchor? Each subsequent attempt closer to shore?
Why would you do that?

Some other problems?
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Our winter talks club had a Senior Trinity House Pilot-Captain William Wilson?-give a talk on his career.

He showed some pictures of cock ups by pilots and skippers, including one of a large ship in a Japanese port that had wiped out shoreside buildings with its bow.

He asked us why the Insurance Company might suggest the Captain was negligent in other ways than hitting the hard stuff. All our guesses were wrong.

He pointed out that both anchors were firmly in place, no attempt to get way off the ship by dropping them. He stated that even if it is a fruitless exercise, deploying the hooks was the expected thing by Shipowners and Underwriters.
 
A1Sailor said:
Surely that is the point the captain is making - the ground was foul but not marked as such on the chart. So you are agreeing with him.
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No I’m not agreeing with him.... Falmouth Bay is a well used anchorage where any foul ground would be well known and reported. However, if a ship had lost an anchor and chain there and reported it to the MCA, one would expect that the MCA would have issued a NTM about the possibility of foul ground: can’t find any trace of that. If the loss wasn’t reported, then the MCA has no way of being able to tell anyone about it.....
Given the number of vessels anchoring in the bay (can be upwards of a dozen or more at a time) then the chance of this poor Russian being the one to to “discover” a discarded chain is, to my way of thinking, low. As I said, more likely to be a smoke screen to help cover his own incompetence in not having his engines on immediate standby in a 50 knot + wind.
Anyhow, the MAIB is investigating (https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...t-investigation-branch-current-investigations) so I due course we’ll be able to see what actually happened and why. Just have to be patient.
 
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I wouldn't pretend to be competent to handle anything much bigger than my little Snapdragon, but it seems to me that if I'm anchoring in the best holding in the world, when a F9 that will put me on a lee shore with plenty of fetch to build up a good (bad?) sea is forecast, not having the engine ready at a moment's notice can only be gross negligence. The presence or otherwise of a chain to foul the anchor is irrelevant - in those conditions, you should accept that there's a risk of dragging and be prepared to deal with it.

I can see how a heavy chain could be snagged by a dragging anchor and I'd expect it to slow the dragging if the anchor's broken out of the ground, but probably not enough to stop the dragging and it may well be impossible to free the anchor. The chain could easily prevent the anchor from digging in, but that's a total red herring, even if true. The real issue is that dragging was a risk in that weather and the engine(s) weren't ready when it all hit the fan.
 
I think the updates on MarineTraffic.com are approximately 2 minutes apart and there are 23 of them - so 45 minutes perhaps? An hour is believable.
Only one anchor seems to be deployed here, but I'm not sure of the relevance.
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The wretched ship is now at anchor in the Carrick Roads, apparently under arrest as her owners have refused to pay to bill for the salvage - leastways, that’s the current rumour in the gig this morning. You couldn’t make this story up: ship detained in the Netherlands for 7 months, anchored in Falmouth Bay, drags anchor, is salvaged by tugs from A&P, anchors again fairly near to where she was anchored before. Owners refuse to pay bill for salvage because Falmouth Harbour Commisioners didn’t tell them about a chain in Falmouth Bay (well outside harbour commisioners area) when the bill was raised by A&P, nothing to do with the harbour commission. So A&P tugs move here into Carrick Roads to await sorting of the whole thing.

Ah well, if she’s going to be here are long as she was in the Netherlands, we’ll get a new turning point for racing.

Updated status here https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/russian-ship-kuzma-minin-moved-2361538
 
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