The Swedish Club has provided lessons learned from an incident where water had entered cargo hold 1 of a bulker, causing wet damage and clogged sounding pipes. As part of its ongoing series into hatch cover incidents.
A bulk carrier had a full cargo of zinc concentrate on board and was sailing from the west coast to the east coast of South America. When the vessel passed Cape Horn it experienced heavy weather of Beaufort scale 9 with green sea covering the cargo hold covers 1, 2 and 3. This continued for four days as the vessel battled the waves. The vessel had no weather routeing.
When the weather calmed down the Master asked the Chief Officer to inspect the cargo holds. Continue reading “Sounding pipes should be clear of debris or cargo”
The West P&I Club has noted a number of recent container fire incidents related to containers which were declared as miscellaneous items but actually contained charcoal/carbon. This is a commodity liable to spontaneous combustion. These containers were below deck and when fires broke out there was considerable damage caused to the vessel and other cargo by the fire and the water used to extinguish the fire.
