2) SAVED BY THE MOON...

Taken from the nautical institute's MARS report no. 98022 - Out of the skeleton cupboard (collected by Captain Beedel)- after asking permission from Julian Parker / June Miller - Publication Sales Manager. (See her message below)



Location - SE coast Brazil, Time - Night
At 2000 on a dark clear night, I took over the watch from the Chief Officer on a 31,000 tonnes general cargo vessel steaming at a speed of 13 knots. I, the Third Mate, found myself confronted by a barrage of fishing vessels, each lit only by a single white lamp. After a tiring hour of alterations of course, serpentine tracks and criss crossing between boats, I finally opted for smaller alterations and CPAs. By 2200, I seemed to be "high potential fishing grounds" and heaved a sigh of relief! Alas, it was short lived, for right ahead lay two white lights bobbing up and down occasionally – one fine on the port bow, the other fine to starboard. The two were separated by about 3 degrees of the compass. "Tired" of being a perpetual give way vessel for fishermen, I decided to do the "daredevil" act of doing a "sandwich" between them.

Everything seemed to be going fine until the (just risen) moon illuminated the sea ahead of me. Imagine my horror when it revealed the silhouette of a fully laden huge VLCC crossing my bow at a very small angle. A large alteration to starboard(she was two miles away at the time of sighting) gave us a passing distance of 0.9nm. Interestingly, the radar showed two distinctive blips at the same bearing as the lights ever since they were eight miles away, both approaching at a speed of eight knots. Their bearings had opened out by a few degrees and they only fused into one when one mile away. Possibly only the bow section and the superstructure aft were reflected by the radar waves as the hull was low down due to her deep draught.

Needless to say, from that day onwards I took more care of the limitations of the bridge equipment as well as my eyes! The lessons I learnt were to take into account the permitted error of +/- one degree in radar heading or bearing the horizontal and vertical positioning of navigation lights.



On 16 Jan 2002, Julian Parker sent me this e-mail, which I reproduce ad verbatim..... I think you get the message!

Dear Rajagopal,
Thank you for your e-mail 13 Jan. MARS is an open site and we are not restricting copyright. If you can use your web site to encourage other members to contribute to MARS that would be valuable. Please use the items.

Sincerely, Julian Parker - June Miller
Publication Sales Manager-The Nautical Institute
202 Lambeth Road, London SE1 7LQ, England
Tel: 44(0)20 7928 1351 Fax: 44(0)20 7401 2817

Contributor's Page - MARS - Nautical Institute
Go Astern
Full Ahead to the next yarn
Just WHO the *&%$#@! is this Sriram ?!