I am working as master on feeder-vessels (approximately 800 TEU) in Europe. One of the ports I visit is Hamburg, a port with heavy feeder traffic. I see many vessels coming from the Baltic through the Kiel Canal that have to shift from one berth to another every few hours, up to 8 times a visit (of sometimes only 24 hours). Some of these vessels will go straight back to the Baltic, again through the Kiel Canal. Other vessels first have to go to Bremerhaven (where they also might have to shift once again) before passing the Kiel Canal.

Many of these vessels are "forced" by their manager/charterer to do all these shiftings and sailing the Elbe (and Weser) without a pilot, and their crew has to do the lashing of containers and connecting of reefers themselves. These vessels operate with a crew of maximum 11 persons, of which only 1 is the master (who is normally the only the only one with a Pilot Exemption Certificate PEC).

Now I ask you, where do these crews (of which some people stay on board for up to 10 months) get their well deserved rest. The ‘rest hour logs’ will probably look fine, but I am sure that many of the crewmembers don't get enough rest. It's not a problem to work many hours, as long as these hours are regular. I can tell you, the shiftings in Hamburg are very irregular. There is a lot of attention to fatigue these days. Well, this is a scenario where fatigue IS an issue. Just because ship's crews have to do more and more, so charterers/managers can save some money. We ARE sailing with a very small crew (mostly of cheap labour countries), have a lot of rules to adhere to (which creates a lot of paperwork), and are still getting more and more work on our shoulders. Somewhere it has to stop.