200109 Near Grounding due to Permanent Highlighting of Charts

Near Grounding due to Permanent Highlighting of Charts
Report No. 200109

Dangers and "No Go" areas on navigational charts should only be marked with a chart pencil and with great care. I was on a ship where only certain types of potential danger, those which the Master considered important, were marked with permanent highlight pens on the chart. As a result other potential danger areas were neglected and, due to the lack of colour they did not stand out against those marked with the permanent coloured highlighters. In places like the Malacca Straits the severity of such a practice is frightening. On several occasions in the past, I had tried to make it clear to the Officers and the Captain that the charts should not be highlighted with coloured permanent markers as one subconsciously tends to only look at those coloured dangers and obviously neglect others.

The following incident happened while on a loaded passage from Madras to Singapore. The vessel was loaded with coal and the draft was 16m even keel. I had noticed that, as usual, only small shoal patches had been highlighted and some patches with less depth, rocks and many other dangers in the vicinity on the chart currently in use had been missed. This made the charts extremely dangerous to use for navigation.

The Master and myself were both on the bridge at the time. There were other vessels following the TSS north of the 21.5m shallow patch. There was a fishing vessel on top of the patch, which appeared to be moving northward very slowly. Taking all points into consideration, it was decided to pass to the south and keep the 21.5m patch on our port side.

As own vessel passed the patch, a south going tide pushed own vessel toward a bigger patch to the south. I immediately pointed out to the Captain the bigger patch to the south which had not been highlighted. The speed was reduced further and helm turned hard to port. Although own vessel cleared the patch, I feel that such an incident could have been easily avoided or the situation better assessed prior to passing the area with just shading or marking the dangers with a chart pencil. As only the shallow patch of 21.5m was highlighted it stood out like a sore thumb on the chart. The Captain who was by now sweating and shaking, immediately ran into the chartroom, picked up the coloured highlighter and painted the bigger patch on the chart!!!