High Potential Near Miss: Line of Fire During Mooring Operations

During the mooring of an offshore support vessel at a sea mooring, the crew noticed that the hawser had become fouled. The chief officer, who was in charge of the watch, decided to manoeuvre the vessel around the buoy to ensure that the line would provide a clear lead once the hawser had been made fast. After securing the hawser to the mooring bitts, the chief officer started manoeuvring the vessel around the sea buoy in an anti-clockwise direction. He was not aware that a seafarer was still located on the foredeck area, coiling a grapple rope.

As the vessel was manoeuvring around the buoy, the swell and sea state affected the vessel’s rate of turn, causing it to move ahead rather than turn as planned. This subsequently resulted in the direction of the mooring buoy to lead aft of the vessel’s port beam and place the hawser line under tension; the taut line slipped over the bow fender and bulwarks arrangement and pinned the seafarer against the handrail of the stairs for approximately 4-5 seconds. The vessel moved in the seaway; the line tension subsided, and the seafarer was freed. He escaped serious injury but experienced some post-event shock and localised bruising and pain.

• The design of the sea buoy allowed the floating hawser and messenger to become fouled when floating free.
• The location of the sea mooring was subject to strong and fluctuating currents (a replacement low profile sea buoy was ready to be deployed upon the vessel’s next arrival in port).
• The chief officer believed the foredeck to be clear of personnel immediately before starting his manoeuvre around the sea buoy to clear the hawser.

The conning position at the forward console has inherent blind spots, caused by vertical window stanchions, which prevent an uninterrupted view of the foredeck area unless the person manoeuvring the vessel moves his field of view;

• Confirmation by very high frequency (VHF) radio that the deck was clear, was not obtained.
• The vessel manoeuvre used to un-wrap the hawser from the sea buoy had the potential to place sudden tension on the hawser line as the vessel rotated around the sea buoy. It also had the potential to place an adverse lead on the line from the vessel’s central panama lead.