Maritime Traffic & Navigation Group

The UK Maritime & Coastguard Agency (MCA) reveals that 6 foreign-flagged ships were under detention in UK ports during August after failing Port State Control (PSC) inspection.

There were 3 new detentions and 3 from previous months.  The overall rate of detentions compared with inspections over the last 12 months was 4.4% - a slight increase on July's 12-month rate.

Of the 125 inspections, 30 vessels had no deficiencies.  The rest had up to 20 - with one ship having even more.

Although many of the deficiencies were heavy mechanical ones, there were plenty of nav- and comms-related:

• Passage plan inadequate, antenna plan out of date and no emergency light from GMDSS batteries to GMDSS.
• Gyro and magnetic compasses defective, with no means of taking a bearing. The gyro compass was unreadable and fluid in the magnetic compass almost empty.
• Passage plan not as required and DSC test calls unable to be made.
• Failure to comply with the International Safety Management Code, with no safety management system on board.
• Aldis signalling lamp out of order, VHF radio installation with incorrect MMSI number and radio battery charger and power distribution incorrect.  Also some inoperative navigation lights.
• VHF radio installation and DSC not secured with wiring hanging loose - and 3 VHF handsets defective.

The UK is part of a regional agreement on port state control known as the Paris Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control (Paris MOU) - information on all ships inspected is held centrally in an electronic database known as SIReNaC.

Detained ships have to satisfy surveyors that remedial work has been carried out before they are allowed to leave port.

Details from the MCA