Watch That Water

Marine Safety Forum reports:
”Recently onboard a OSV in the north­ern North Sea two poten­tial inci­dents could have resulted in major dam­age to equip­ment and/or per­sonal injury, had it not been for the obser­va­tions of the deck crew.

On each occa­sion after hav­ing sailed through rough seas and inclement weather the ves­sel arrived on loca­tion and on closer inspec­tion of the cargo revealed exces­sive water in the base of the units. The Mas­ter informed the instal­la­tion of the sit­u­a­tion. The deck crew pro­ceeded to free the drain holes in the first instance and in the sec­ond pumped out the water with onboard equipment.

The inves­ti­ga­tion found that:

The water orig­i­nated from sea spray and rain
The unit was not fit­ted with a cover to limit the amount of water ingress
The drain holes of the unit were blocked with debris
The drain holes appeared to be of an insuf­fi­cient size to effec­tively drain away large
vol­umes of water

Actions for Prevention

Open bas­kets / skips should be cleaned thor­oughly between each load to ensure no exces­sive build up of debris can block the drain holes.

Onshore / off­shore cargo load­ers should ensure that the drain holes are clear of any small objects / debris prior to the unit being loaded with equip­ment as per indus­try guidelines.

Onshore / off­shore cargo inspec­tion per­son­nel should ensure that any open top bas­kets / skips are free from water before being approved to ship or backloaded

Ves­sel crews to be aware that dur­ing inclement weather, open bas­kets / skips have the poten­tial to fill with water and should be checked in accor­dance with best cargo han­dling prac­tice and the instal­la­tion informed.