On board,,
At that time, I peacefully sailed out to the South China Sea.
I could calmly navigate to Gladstone, Australia since it seemed that heavy
rains chilled the heat of the board and sky with dark clouds made a high wind.
This tranquilty was like a calm before the storm because I would navigate the
Pacific Ocean with heavy storm during Monsoon season. However, I wanted to
enjoy this moment. My life with sailing has been almost 4 years and I thought
that I had known what I should do at that time.
On that day, the Street of Taiwan was very calm, but heavy
squalls with frequent thunder and lightning existed during the rainy season.
While chatting with a duty quarter master when a third officer handed over
navigation watch, my ship was boastingly speeding along an estimated course
toward Darwin with speed about 16 knots sneering at slow ships. Upon watching a
huge vessel ahead, I was trying to speed up and overtake it.
Because of storm cloud and heavy squall, my radar showed some
fuzzy and vague images, but I thought it did not matter to catch up. I placed
the stem heading on the left because it seemed port side was wide and clear to
steer. My ship was approaching to the huge vessel, but it seemed okay to
overtake it. But this was just what I thought, the thing were abruptly changed.
Hard Port!!! This was time when I saw the red light of the
heading vessel. Because my ship was over 15 knots, it turned to port side with
strong shake and made it very close to the vessel.
I could escape from the peril while circling 90 degree from
the true course, and I could not calm down to the close call. While my ship
returned the true course, steered off to starboard to go to the alter course
and I was cooling off, a lightning made me see a bulk carrier which was getting
close to our heading. Until then, my Radar and naked eyes could not catch it.
Deciding to starboard to avoid a collision, I continued go to the starboard
side, but I observed that the bulk carrier altered course to our heading, which
was the port. Seemingly, the bulk carrier noticed me for the first time at that
moment. Regardless of this situation heavy squall was pouring us down, and it
seemed that thunder and lightning warned us of what would happen in the near
future.
At this moment, I made the worst mistake to quickly issue the
hard port…and then…
Unfortunately, the bulk carrier turned to starboard while I
stopped starboarding and started to hard port. I could not turn to the other
side, and it was too short to turn to the hard port hoping that the bulk
carrier swiftly turned to the port.
Although the bulk
carrier turned to port approaching to my heading, it was still to late
to put the clock back. I realized that I could not help colliding with the
carrier, and I stopped the engine while turning to starboard where the carrier
passed my heading less than 0.4NM. In the end the bulk carrier passed and I
could continued the voyage normally.
Recalling the near miss, it does not make any sense to me. It
seems that most of accidents arise from carelessness. It is a shame that the
accident could happen because did not pay any attention to the environment
around us.
Additionally, there have been many manuals and materials that
can be used for pedagogical purpose in safe navigation, because safety
navigation is the most important things during at sea. This is to known to
everybody, but it is not easy to act in accordance with this simple lesson.
That is all of my short story and I called it ‘trouble in the
heaven’
Bon voyage
