Grounding Case Study - Issue 101

Introduction

North’s Loss Prevention Guide Rocks and Hard Places: How to avoid them includes a series of case studies intended to generate discussion about circumstances surrounding grounding and fixed and floating object damage incidents.

Additional case studies will be published in Signals from time to time and below is the latest of them. Each case study is set out as simply as possible, with the minimum information necessary to describe a situation. The case studies ask a number of questions but answers are not provided.

Scenario

A small cargo vessel was on a regular route from Sweden to Northern Ireland with the Chief Officer on watch. The intended route, as was normal practice, took the vessel through the inshore traffic route on the west coast of Scotland. At around 0630 the vessel grounded at the position shown on the chart extract opposite.

Questions

1.  What factors may have contributed to this grounding incident?

2.  What steps could have been taken on board to prevent this incident from occurring?

3.  What steps could the company take to prevent similar incidents occurring in the future?

Further Information

Members can obtain electronic versions of North’s loss prevention guide Collisions: How to avoid them by e-mailing loss.prevention@nepia.com

To obtain hard copies of the Guides, please download the Loss Prevention Order Form from our website www.nepia.com/lp-publications