In the September/October edition of the Nautilus magazine “The Telegraph” there is an article concerning the captain of the CSOV VOS Stone who had been accused of testing an emergency system shortly after pulling off from a TP (transition piece – the foundation pillar of a wind turbine), due to adverse weather. He was accused of “criminal liability”, so prior to his court appearance he was supported by the union, who provided a lawyer and appropriate expertise who drew up a statement of defence. This resulted in the German Public Prosecution Service exempting him from prosecution.
This is pretty strange stuff, which has caused me to look a bit more deeply into the event, which occurred in 2018 and resulted in an investigation by Vroon and the charterers who were probably Volker Wessels Boskalis Marine Solutions Holding B.V (VBMS). Their reports were used by the German marine accident investigators, the Bundesstelle für Seeunfalluntersuchung, (the BSU) to create their own investigation report. The BSU report actually says that it should not be used in court proceedings, but there we go.
Photo: Jan Plug
Here are some details about the VOS Stone, which is a CSOV (a Commissioning Service Operations Vessel) not a Supply Operations Vessel as described in the BSU report. The ship was built in China and entered service in 2017. It is 80 metres long and can offer accommodation for 60 contractors with an Ampelmann gangway. Power is provided by two 2400 kW MAN engines driving 2 x azimuthing propellers at the stern and three bow thrusters. It is provided with a Kongsberg DP system and, importantly, a Kongsberg cJoy joystick. The VOS Stone is one of those craft providing support during the construction of offshore wind farms, sometimes known as walk-to work ships. For DP operations the ship was provided with a master, a Chief Officer, a First Officer and two Second Officers, the four guys being divided into two shifts working six on, six off. The details provided in the BSU report say that the ship holds a safe manning certificate for 7 personnel and, just as a side issue, I’d be interested to know how these 7 people are distributed to operate the ship “safely”.
But let’s start half way through the event. What the hell is this “emergency system” which the captain was accused of using. Well folks, it’s the joystick, so everyone involved seems to have been unaware that the joystick is a standard part of the DP setup, the only difference being that it must be capable of operation whether the DP system is working or not, hence the possibility of its use in an emergency and it designation as the IJS.
I have read the operating manual for the Kongsberg cJoy, which seems to be more than the owners, the charterers or the BSU have done, and it appears me that the meat of the situation is the manner in which the cJoy is used on the VOS Stone, and possibly other ships of the Vroon organisation.
I am guessing here, but it appears from photographs in the BSU report that main panel of the cJoy is embedded in the DP desk, and in the after window facing the stern, and the central forward window the company has chosen to place the two secondary panels which, when Kongsberg designed the system, they thought would be placed on the bridge wings. These secondary panels do not have quite the same levels of access to the central control system as the main panel.
So we imagine how it all went. The Second Mate as the junior DP operator had been instructed to move the ship away from the TP which I assume he did by stepping the ship out under DP until it was just over 100 metres away, up wind and up current from the structure. At this point the captain came to the bridge and, in my view, decided that he would move the ship further away using the joystick, but because the console at the forward station is actually a secondary system it cannot call for control, it can only accept it. Hence the captain had to ask the Second Mate firstly to switch to joystick and secondly to give him control at the forward conning position.
The captain has to go aft to show the Second Mate what to do, and once this has happened he returns forward to his joystick. Meanwhile the ship is drifting back towards the structure. The captain at the forward console on attempting to operate the joystick, finds that he has to access a screen to enable the thrusters, but possibly he does not know how to do this (all this is my supposition). Hence now realising that the ship is getting close to the TP again, asks the Second Mate to put the system into manual, so that he can drive away using the main azimuthing propulsion. By now the First Officer who has been engaged in other activities joins the fray, but the Second Mate mishears the master and returns the ship to DP.
Precisely what happens then is unclear, but it is likely that the DP system first of all returns the heading to whatever it was when last set up as and the ship is close enough to the TP so that when it takes up the heading it hits the structure. Then – looking at the various diagrams – it seems that the first officer takes control in manual and steers the ship ahead putting on quite a bit of power, and turning to port to clear the stern, but crane still hits the structure. There were couple of minor injuries and a bit of damage to the ship.
So it seems to me that the captain was unwise in his attempt to use the joystick when the weather was setting the ship back towards the TP, although had he and the Second Mate been fully familiar with the system it would have all worked pretty fine. And so we get to the question of who actually had become familiar with the Operating Manual. There is reference to an “Operating Manual” in the BSU report but it is obviously the one provided by Vroon, outlining responsibilities and such. The Kongsberg cJoy Operating Manual is a different animal almost certainly unread by the owners, the charterers or the investigators, and as a result there are a number of recommendations in the BSU report which are at least questionable.
The most notable recommendation is as follows: “The IJS cJoy is an emergency system and should not be used while sailing between TPs in the construction field”. But hang on a moment. The BSU report has chosen to repeat the list of the joystick’s capabilities in its preamble and one of its capabilities is that: “The autopilot mode enables the ship to steer a predefined course automatically”.
So what a mess. This article may be the only one in existence which points out the fact that no-one knew what they were talking about, and that the German prosecutors had the nerve to attempt to prosecute the captain based on entirely spurious information. And lastly anyone involved in the offshore wind industry should be aware that placing ships very close to fixed structures for long periods of time will inevitably result in occasional contacts, and the whole idea of prosecuting someone for making a mistake in such a high risk environment is absolutely ridiculous.
My recommendation to you guys out there is that you make sure that you are absolutely aware of how every bit of this tricky electronic equipment is to be used. First read the manual, and then, in a safe environment, make sure that all the switches and buttons do what they manual says they do. And secondly learn how to drive the ship. A competent shiphandler would easily have avoided this accident, but while there is much training in the use of DP systems, no such training exists for shiphandling.
I have my own involvement with the joystick! Back in the early 1980s my owners asked me to look at the controls to be installed in a newbuilding, and being aware of how crude the joysticks were, I made some recommendations, which resulted in them being given low gain, a means of selecting the turning point, and a defined X/Y axis so that the operator could see the position of the stick. Looking at the Kongsberg manual I’m pleased to see that all those features are still available.