Members will doubtless recall the findings of the court in the Birchall case recently which concerned the question of ‘command’ during a Cook Strait incident. 

As I understand it the case revolved around the question, and legal interpretation of,  ‘Command or control?’ and the Court’s findings were based, as doubtless they had to be, on the wording and interpretation of the Maritime Transport Act 1994. 

I have no difficulty with the judgment which was presumably the only conclusion to which they could come in the circumstances. However, the result is that it is causing New Zealanders to confuse the time honoured, and demonstrably practical, interpretation of the difference between ‘command’ and ‘control’ of a vessel. 

John Brown, when still Master of the Company, made reference to it in writing. Others have done so in private debate and discussion. 

I raise it now because I have read at least twice since then (unfortunately I do not recall where) of the two being confused but as I recall it they were in relatively authoritative statements of whatever was their source. 

I am concerned that the evil is spreading and it’s time to try to put a stop to it. 

I have no difficulty with the concept, of a ship having on board two masters where her operation calls for it (i.e. Cook Strait ferries) so long as there is clear a hand over with entries in both Official and Deck Log Books, and the retiring master is ‘on leave’ aboard the ship — not merely ‘off duty’ — during the period the alternative master is in command. 

As experienced mariners we are very familiar with the concepts of ‘in command’ and ‘in control’. I do not need to elaborate on them here. 

I have not yet attempted to research the many facets of this subject and this is only a preliminary ‘alert’ in the hope that our members and other master mariners in NZ will be willing to take up the issue as being of sufficient important in the operation of ships. 

I do not wish to appear unduly biased in expressing a concern that so much direction of NZ maritime legislation and operation is being driven by an MSA (Maritime New Zealand) which lacks, to a now significant extent, experienced mariners in senior positions whose replacements, understandably, have little understanding of the culture or the practical aspects of the matter. 

I believe that as responsible master mariners we have a duty to speak out and I suspect that the MTA drafters may perhaps have been unclear on this point, possibly from ignorance, and were not deliberately intending to upset the boat. 

I believe, but correct me if I am wrong, that the problem is being brought about by the way in which this subject is framed in the legislation; the MTA being at the heart of the problem. 

I feel sufficiently strongly that, if after proper research and legal opinion, my concern is supported, we should take the matter further with MNZ, and with the Minister of Transport if necessary, with a view of ultimately ensuring the legislation does not erode a clearly understood practice amongst mariners which, when properly handled, removes confusion and adds to maritime safety. 

As a member of the Honourable Company I would be happy to write to its master for an expression of his, and/or the Honourable Company’s, views. Similarly I would happily seek the views of the Nautical Institute too. 

If I am correct in my understanding, and if becomes necessary, I would be pleased to see the NZ Company enlist the support of maritime organizations in the UK and Commonwealth.  

If members share my concern  I think we first need to determine if I am correct in believing this is presently an NZ only, concern arising out of the MTA and the court’s judgment in the Birchall case. 

To this end our Master might care to consult with the Company’s legal advisers and, being Auckland based, might perhaps choose to have a first discussion with the Auckland Branch’s legal adviser to whom I am sending a copy of his memo for his interest.

Warning on increased risk of GPS jamming

Cheap GPS jammers bought off the internet could seriously disrupt busy shipping lanes writes Craig Eason in Lloyds List Tuesday 13 October 2009

NAVIGATION experts are warning about the increasing availability of jamming devices that can render ships without key satellite positioning data.

Experts claim that even the forthcoming European Galileo constellation is no safer from malicious or accidental jamming, as it will use a similar range of frequencies as existing global navigation satellite systems. These include the US Global Position System constellation, Russia’s Glonass and China’s Compass systems.

Electronic transmitters — some smaller than a mobile phone — can be used to disrupt the GPS signals from satellites, leaving equipment such as electronic navigation tools and mandatory vessel monitoring systems all but useless.

There have been official trials that have demonstrated the impact of this simple, readily available equipment, which can be used maliciously to disrupt shipping. These include tests last year by Trinity House, the UK’s lighthouse authority responsible for aids to navigation. It managed to send a jamming signal from a UK headland and destroy GPS signals on one of its vessels 20 nm away.

Satellite and communications consultant David Last advises organisations such as the Royal Institute of Navigation about the increased risk of malicious jamming.

He said UK police were aware of an escalated criminal tendency to use jammers bought off the internet. They are being used to help steal high-value cars or expensive freight loads with built-in GPS tracking.

In a number of cases, the small jammers were plugged into the cigarette lighter socket of a car that was then put in a container and shipped out of the country. Consequently, those onboard the vessel were unaware of the presence of an active jammer that could produce GPS signal distortions.

When technical experts at UK’s General Lighthouse Authority performed jamming trials on one of its vessels, Pole Star , last year they were shocked at the impact onboard the vessel.

GPS provides position, navigational direction and, most vitally for many industries as well as maritime, time keeping. It is a key input into the Electronic Chart Display and Information Systems that the shipping community has been told to install on all its ships over the next nine years.

Timing gives Ecdis the accurate positions, helps drive the gyro compasses and is the key position and time producer for the data included in mandatory transmissions in automatic identification signals and long-range identification and tracking.

“We had AIS tracks doing 1,000 knots over land,” said Trinity House deputy master Jeremy de Halpert.

The test led to confusion and pandemonium on the bridge of the vessel. “All the alarms went off — not just some, but nearly all of them,” he added. Vessel systems relying on the GPS signal became unreliable and the level of automation on the vessel threatened to leave it out of control.

Rear Adm De Halpert said the bridge team found it difficult to navigate and respond to the bridge alarms and systems losses at the same time. The gyro compass was erratic, so there was no accurate heading indication, the auto pilot threatened to change course and the crew were concerned that the engine systems would be impacted.

This test occurred when the crew was expecting the disruption and there was more than one person on the bridge. A solitary navigating officer on the bridge of a modern vessel could be at a loss responding to the continual alarms, rather than attempting to understand the cause of the disruption.

Jamming is not always deliberate. There have been incidents of unintentional jamming — one of the Trinity House vessels reported a fault in the VHF aerial that inadvertently jammed the GPS signal until it was discovered two days later.

GPS jamming also has implications for banking and trading, which are reliant on precise time keeping. Other systems that could be seriously adversely affected by a jammed GPS signal are the National Grid, mobile phones and hospitals.

In 2007, there was a major jamming incident at the port of San Diego. A US Coast Guard investigation found that it was caused by a US Navy vessel, which was taking part in a communications exercise. It inadvertently jammed the GPS signals for two hours across the harbour and city.

“Because GPS is the principal system for synchronising telecommunication systems, they lost 150 mobile phone cells around the city, as well as affecting all the ships in the port,” said Prof Last.

Hospital pagers failed to work and aviation GPS systems were also said to be affected, he added.

Experts say GPS equipment is susceptible to jamming because of the weak signal ground receiving stations, such as a mobile phone network or a ship navigation system, obtain from a distant satellite. The Trinity House trial used a jammer producing only 1.5 watts to create a 20 nm disruption zone.

Prof Last, Rear Adm de Halpert and other experts are concerned that the shipping industry is placing a huge dependence on a sole means of position determination that is proven to be easily fallible, yet are refusing to take the risks seriously.

“We know there is a major vulnerability. It is a bit like the first computer viruses, which were out there and no one was worried,” said Prof Last.

Trinity House plan to run a similar GPS disruption test in December in northeast England, in a bid to make industry and government more keenly aware of the issues, said Trinity House and General Lighthouse Authority director of research and radio navigation Sally Basker.

This test would use a much smaller jamming device to prevent systems off the vessel being affected, but will demonstrate the severity of the situation, Ms Basker added.

While the Trinity House tests have used relatively small jamming devices to minimise disruption, Prof Last warned that the bigger systems on the market could cause disruption over an area of more than 300 sq km.

If such a signal is used maliciously close to Dover it could create havoc in one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world and could render the AIS signals received by the local traffic control centres as meaningless.

The proof that GPS is fallible also comes with reports that the US-controlled GPS constellation is likely to suffer over the next five years as the number of active satellites drops by 20% during a renewal and maintenance period. This could render a drop in the accuracy of the signals.

Trinity House, with support from the French and Norwegians, has been promoting e-Loran as a useful back-up for GPS.

While Rear Adm de Halpert recognises that GPS is normally both reliable and accurate, he is pushing to get countries to support the development of e-Loran, a land-based system that sends out a signal similar to GPS.

Although any radio signal could be jammed, according to Ms Basker, it would be much harder to jam an e-Loran signal as it is 10,000 times stronger and cannot be drowned out as easily as the much weaker GPS signal.

“It is the difference in power between a 100 watt light bulb and a rock concert in your back garden,” Ms Basker added.

AGGRESSIVE action by the US Coast Guard has significantly reduced seafarer paperwork queues, according to testimony on Capitol Hill yesterday.  

By the end of September seafarers had to wait 26 days to receive their credentials, instead of the previous 55 days.  

A backlog of 6,800 applications was also eliminated at the end of July, testified Rear Admiral Kevin Cook, director of the Coast Guard’s Prevention Policy for Marine Safety, Security and Stewardship. More than 16,000 mariners have received their credentials since July.  

Part of the backlog programme was the result of the Coast Guard’s closer scrutiny of seafarers’ health and medical history after the Cosco Busan allided with the Bay Bridge in San Francisco in November 2007.  

The medical records of the Busan’s pilot at the time, John Cota, became the focus of the accident based on his prescription drug history.  

Cook added that the Coast Guard is working to develop a mariner credential “trusted agent” programme to allow marine employers, training institutions and unions to submit complete credential application packages directly to the Coast Guard’s National Maritime Center.

Craig Eason writes in Lloyds List – Tuesday 6 October 2009

NAVAL architects could be creating legally sound ships that are unstable if they focus too much on cargo efficiency in the design process, according to Flensburg Shipyard naval architect Heike Billerbeck.

“Some designers only think of cargo capacity and nothing else,” Ms Billerbeck said. “Legislators should make it a requirement that other criteria such as seakeeping are taken into account more.”

She cited a design Flensburg made for a ro-ro vessel requested by Seatruck Ferries, a division of the Clipper Group.

Seatruck was the owner of Riverdance , the vessel that ran ashore after a freak wave disabled it in January 2008, and wanted a vessel that was as efficient as possible yet had improved handling in the light of the accident.

Although the UK marine accident investigation board highlighted poor stability and cargo stowage as factors in the 1977-built ro-ro vessel’s demise, the operator has maintained that a freak wave alone led to the vessel developing a list and losing power.

In designing a new vessel for a similar operational criteria, Ms Billerbeck said this could easily be done to meet the requirements laid out in the International Maritime Organization’s stability rules, IMO resolution A.749, but if too strong a focus on meeting the requirements for cargo capacity was maintained then the eventual vessel could end up with poor seakeeping.

Flensburg was asked to design a vessel for operation in the Irish Sea, with a lane capacity of 2,150 m and service speed of 21 knots produced by two 8 MW main engines. Using these parameters the shipyard’s design team arrived at a four-deck vessel with improved water resistance and fuel performance.

The design met not only the client’s requirements, but also those of the classification societies and the IMO’s rules on intact and damage stability.

But Ms Billerbeck said that while the design work done on the vessel — including scale tests in the Hamburg ship model test basin — revealed a statistically correct vessel, it had a tendency to roll up to 30 degrees with wave heights of just over 5 m. In a following sea, the tests revealed a possibility of capsize as a result of the dynamic motion increasing roll.

“There is no absolute universal ship efficiency index as the dynamic effects on a vessel are not taken into account within the IMO stability rules and regulations,” she told the German Society for Maritime Technology when it gathered in Hamburg last week to discuss ship efficiency measures.

Ms Billerbeck said the IMO resolution A.749 is based on statistics including mostly vessels under 100 m in length and dating back to the early 20th century.

“This creates a problem and new designs are required for developing further speed,” she added.

Therefore ship efficiency needs to look at the whole operation of ships such as ro-ro vessels on tight schedules.

If lashing requirements are reduced due to recorded improved seakeeping then turnaround times in port can be improved, which in turn will allow for lower sailing speeds while still maintaining an allocated timetable.

Seatruck has four new ro-ro vessels on order with Flensburg shipyard.

“Operational needs need to be matched against ship efficiency, and seakeeping needs have to be worked into the design right from the start,” Ms Billerbeck said.

It is reported that the IMO is recommending that some celestial navigation skills be retained for the immediate future. This will probably be taught in shore based training establishments.  Michael Grey wrote this short article in a recent issue of Lloyds List

I spent several years learning to navigate and several more putting it into practice. Like all navigators of that era, I was relatively self-sufficient — my 1909 Plath sextant was carried with me, and all I really needed was an almanac and some charts. It was important to determine the wishes of the master, as to how far he wanted to be off the coast or offlying rocks, but once that was established, the courses were laid down and duly followed. I could follow this procedure on any ship I served on. Navigation was navigation. Full stop.

All of which is a bit different with the emergence of e-navigation, electronic charts and the considerable differences that exist between the equipment and software of different manufacturers. If I am going to be safe, I need training to ‘convert’ from paper charts to the electronic variety. It is important that the training I get is suitable for the ship and the equipment I am to serve in. As we have found with other forms of modern training, ‘generic’ training can be almost useless, if the equipment bears no resemblance to that which will be found aboard the ship that I find myself aboard, after undertaking the course.

This is a serious problem, bearing in mind the slow pace of any form of standardisation, with manufacturers and chart suppliers alike all convinced that their equipment is the cat’s pyjamas. We are faced, then, with the increase in inflexibility, with the crewing department racking their brains over which navigators have undertaken relevant training on which equipment, before assigning them to a ship, or a huge number of additional short courses to be organised.

Or we could, I suppose, just muddle on as before, with the watchkeepers undertaking their on-the-job training, getting their five-minute briefing from the last second mate, who is impatient to go on leave, and, sadly, speaking a different language, turns out to be not the best possible tutor. But there have already been large and sophisticated ships, equipped with all manner of fancy gear, sliding majestically on to mudbanks at full sea speed because the poor old navigator did not figure out how to work the equipment. Unless people join their ships by helicopter, with the vessel far from land, the chances are that the risks of this happening will be during the first hours of a voyage, when new navigators are sweating a lot and engaging in some desperate trial and error with their unfamiliar gear.

Tuesday 15 September 2009 Lloyds List by Craig Eason

Instruction in use of Ecdis is tipped to be on IMO agenda despite adding to owners’ costs

TRAINING in the use of electronic chart display and information systems could become mandatory for seafarers, adding to the expense of shipowners already facing the costs of compulsory Ecdis equipment on their vessels.

Next January, the committee within the International Maritime Organization that deals with standards in training and watchkeeping will meet and industry experts believe the lack of formal training in Ecdis will be high on the agenda.

Earlier this year, the IMO formally agreed to make the installation of Ecdis equipment mandatory on all ships that fall under the requirements of the Solas convention.

In many cases, with the requirement for back-up services and the move to paperless navigation, this will mean that ships will require two systems to be installed.

Equipment makers are now rushing to get their systems fully approved to meet this burgeoning market in what is seen as the most significant change in navigation since the invention of the radar about 100 years ago.

To date, there are understood to be about 25 fully compliant Ecdis models on the market. But each will vary in the systems they offer. The most basic could cost about $17,000 while the top of the range system, with a host of additional features and data inputs, could set a shipowner back $220,000 per unit. A small fortune if the vessel is to require two systems to be able to eliminate the use of paper charts.

But with the range of systems there is the need for training. There is an IMO model course, but this is neither mandatory nor, in some experts’ opinions, does it cover the key issues.

“It is woefully inadequate. It does not cover the reason why ships ground at all,” said one ex-navigator, who has worked on a range of Ecdis systems. He said there was a huge lack of understanding of the functions of Ecdis and supported the move to create a formal level of training for ships’ navigators. He added that traditionally cadets spend months at college learning about navigation with paper charts, yet there are only vague guidelines on teaching the use of a technology that is supposed to replace them.

Some flag states could be developing rules to make Ecdis training mandatory already, and more advanced shipping companies are believed to have placed Ecdis training as part of their International Safety Management code.

But such rules are not specified as mandatory, nor widespread, and often refer to officers requiring only a degree of familiarisation with Ecdis, such as in the port states inspection criteria for countries in the Paris Memorandum of Understanding.

Seafarer training colleges around the world have started offering Ecdis courses, as have a range of other providers. These are not compulsory, and in some cases not approved by a flag state.

There are concerns that should Ecdis training become mandatory, there are not enough training facilities, approved or not, to cater for the demand that could ensue. Experts think there could be up to half a million seafarers, who would need to be trained over the coming eight years.

The UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency has approved a number of courses, one of which is a private training specialist, Ecdis Ltd. A founder of the company, Mal Instone, said seafarers were left with too little training and develop too much faith in the system.

He cited the incident in January 2008 when the P&O ferry Pride of Canterbury hit a submerged but charted wreck because the bridge team had been relying on an Ecdis, which was not being used on the best settings.

One of the limitations of an Ecdis chart, said Mr Instone, is the reduction of information available as a user zooms into a specific chart area — a little like using a larger scale chart but zooming in on a web based map on the internet. Known as scamin, or scale minimum, crucial information, which could include depth data, can be lost, as the screen would otherwise become too cluttered. “You have to understand the system, and you still have to understand navigation. The same skills are required,” Mr Instone said.

Ecdis Ltd insists on a five-day training course for navigators on the use of the technology. This includes learning how to use the Ecdis system without having a satellite fix input.

According to Mr Instone, many bridge teams rely too heavily on their global positioning satellite position fixes, which can be disrupted or inaccurate. Therefore, navigators should be able to use other data inputs to the Ecdis system to create a position fix.

According to the rules of the International Maritime Organization, all owners must have their vessels’ electronic chart display and information systems compliant between 2012 and 2018, depending on vessel type.

There have to be approved systems, knowledge of how to use the systems, and the right electronic charts to put into the hardware. There is currently a scramble to get the charts ready.

A proper Ecdis chart is known as S57 compliant, referring to the specifications set by the International Hydrographic Organization. Hydrographic offices of coastal states are converting their charts to this format, or getting more experienced hydrographic offices to do it for them.

An S57 compliant electronic navigation chart has to be deployed in an Ecdis, otherwise the system is considered a raster chart display service — raster charts are a scanned replication of the paper chart in an electronic display over which the vessel’s position can be laid, along with a voyage route.

Ecdis charts are more like databases of information that can be interrogated. They provide all of the navigation functionality of the raster chart but add capabilities such as additional alarms triggered by the chart data and the ability to remove some chart information to simplify the display. They also allow additional features to be used, such as weather routing, light and buoy details and even three-dimensional mapping.

Chart providers are in a position to make a lot of money with mandatory Ecdis, as a vessel sailing in a particular cell, a term for the specific Ecdis chart area, has no choice but to use it.

Hydrographic offices have been active in converting their paper charts to Ecdis versions. However, this means using an approved datum, a kind of zero sea level point and position, to ensure all the areas match each other. There are many paper charts that have areas that have not been surveyed for centuries. To become Ecdis compliant, such a chart could need to be resurveyed to ensure it is reported at the right datum, allowing vessels to sail in and out of cells seamlessly.

Mal Instone, a co-founder of the training provider Ecdis Ltd, said shipowners and ship masters are unaware of the issues at stake in the deployment of Ecdis and the lack of coverage that might still be lacking once Ecdis becomes mandatory.

The more profitable busy sea routes will have been converted to the right format, less-used charts will probably be last, if at all, he suggested.

The UKHO has its own brand of Ecdis data, and has signed contracts with other government HOs to develop and use its data, but it admits to having a programme of developing the major sea routes and ports first.

It has also set itself the ambitious target of achieving full coverage by the end of the year and to date has 9,500 encs in its vector chart service, covering 1,800 ports.