99012 Overtaking Dangerously

Overtaking Dangerously
Report No. 99012

I am the 3rd Officer on an 18,000 tonne oil tanker and had come on to the bridge at 1840 to relieve the Chief Officer for dinner. He handed over the vessel to me on a course of 0300T about 30nm before the alteration of course into the Skagerrak. There was not much traffic about - only one tanker overtaking me on my port quarter at a distance of 1.2nm. There was nothing unusual about the situation except that the tanker was closing in whilst overtaking. When the tanker was at a distance of 0.9nm and still abaft my beam, I sensed that the OOW was trying to cut across my bows. I thought that no one would be foolish enough to do this, particularly as the tanker was only doing about 1.5 knots faster than own vessel and it was his duty to keep clear, meaning that I would maintain my course and speed. He could easily have altered to starboard earlier and passed under my stern but when the distance between us had reduced to 0.7nm there was still no evidence of him altering his course or speed so I tried to contact him by VHF but received no reply.

At 1900, when the Chief Officer returned, I was trying to contact the other vessel on VHF and he then replied asking what my intentions were. The distance between us at this time was 0.5nm and he was four points on my port bow. I told the OOW on the other vessel that as he was overtaking me, it was his obligation to keep clear and that I would maintain my course and speed. To this he replied, "You are crazy" and to our horror he gave a broad alteration to starboard. By that time, I had the wheel in hand steering and the Chief Officer asked me to come round to starboard. By the time own vessel had started to swing, the distance between the two of us had been reduced to 0.1nm. Then the other fellow did something worse - realising that he could not cross our bow safely, he gave hard a port. As his ship started swinging to port, his stern swung towards our bow and cleared it by less than half a cable. When we were finally clear and the Chief Officer asked me to return to our original course. The other vessel took a round turn to port and passed under our stern.

This incident sent a chill down my spine and made me wonder whether STCW and other such conventions are having the desired effect. On hindsight I feel that the only action lacking on my part was that I did not give 5 short blasts on the whistle, although in this case I doubt if it would have been of use as the other person seemed hell bent on having a disastrous accident.