Safety News

Issue # 01/02

We encourage all employees to pay attention to these broadcasts, and discuss how best we can improve the way we do
our business. A copy of this broadcast should be posted on the ships notice board.

Unsafe anchorage
M.T. Willy, a Cyprus registered product tanker, sailed out of the port of Plymouth after completing a discharge of 3000
tonnes of petrol, and immediately ran into stormy weather. The Master decided to anchor in Cawsand Bay, which lies at the
entrance to Plymouth Sound, and wait for the storm to subside.
However, soon after anchoring, strong onshore winds caused the vessel to drag, and before the crew could adequately
respond, she was hard aground on the rocky beach close astern of her.
While the 12 crewmembers managed to disembark and walk across to safety, the ship herself suffered extensive damage. Her
rudder was lost in the first impact, the engine room was breached and flooded. The bunker tanks, containing 80 tonnes of
fuel oil, remained out of reach of the rocks but 7 out of the 10 cargo tanks were breached, posing a significant threat of
explosion.
The Coast Guard and salvage crews, engaged in the Free Willy operation, are concentrating their efforts on removing the
fuel oil bunkers from the ship and on securing her against movement on the rocks so as to minimise the risk of explosion.
This is not the first casualty on the rocks in this bay, although all the others have been small fishing boats or sailing yachts.
In hindsight, some thought may be given to the circumstances that prompted the Master to choose to anchor in a relatively
unprotected bay to avoid a storm. Especially when conventional wisdom would suggest that a vessel would be safer
steaming slowly at sea when encountering rough weather.

Incidents in the fleet

Dragging anchor due to rough weather
A VLCC, laid up until further notice, anchored at TP Anchorage east of Singapore. She put her port anchor down to 9
shackles in water. Both boilers were shut down.
A few days later, due to a strong low-pressure development over the South China Sea, the winds at the anchorage increased
gusting up to 40 knots. The continuing adverse weather took its toll by causing the chain to slip out suddenly from 9 shackles
to 12.5 shackles in water, as well as causing the vessel to drag anchor by about 3 cables.
A second risk assessment was immediately carried out on board and in the office, and mitigation was achieved by keeping
one boiler on standby for the present spell of adverse weather, as well as for any future periods of rough weather.

Safety News

Issue # 01/02

ODME interlocked valves, leaking valves and oil transfer

A vessel loaded in all center tanks, except 3C. All the wing tanks remained empty and this was confirmed at the time of final
ullaging. Upon completion of loading the vessel was observed to have a list of 0.1 0 P, which was attributed to the distribution
of bunkers.
On departure from port, the vessels list to port was found to increase. Investigation by the chief officer revealed that cargo
had gone into Slop (P) tank, while the ullage of 5C cargo tank had increased.
The reasons were as follows:

A valve on a pipe discharging into Slop (P) was open because the ODME was kept in auto mode, and the open status of
this valve was a start-up condition for the ODME. The same pipe was used for the eductor discharge into Slop (P).

A valve on the pipe for eductor discharge into 5C was leaking.

Oil flowed past the leaking valve at 5C, and into Slop (P), through the open valve.
The ODME was switched to manual mode, Slop (P) discharge valve was shut and further ingress of oil into the tank was
stopped. The list was rectified by transferring the oil back into 5C from Slop (P).

Injuries in the Tanker Pacific fleet

1.

An AB suffered an eye injury due to a rust particle entering his eye while chipping. The injury, in fact took place when

the AB stopped work and had taken off his chipping goggles to clean them. Another crewmember, chipping in the vicinity,
shot off the offending rust particle into his unprotected eye at this inopportune moment.

Remember SAFETY IS OUR BUSINESS.

Best regards from the Safety and Quality Department
12 January 2002