98022 Out of the Skeleton Cupboard – Saved by the Moon

Out of the Skeleton Cupboard – Saved by the Moon
S E Coast Brazil.
Report No. 98022.

At 200 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.