93022 Near Miss Crossing TSS

Crossing a Traffic Separation Scheme
- Dover Strait.
- Report No. 93022.

A ferry bound from Calais to Dover was forced to make a round turn to starboard in order to avoid a container vessel in the North East Lane which refused to take avoiding action, the circumstances were as follows.

The Observer, who was in the North East Lane of the Dover Strait TSS, repeatedly called a large container vessel on VHF Channel 16. The calls were made from passing the Ridens SE buoy until past the ZC2 in an attempt to ascertain the intentions of the container vessel which was very slowly overtaking him, before both vessels would be in a position where ferry traffic would be encountered. No reply was received.

Both vessels were travelling at about 20 knots. To avoid any close quarters situations developing, the observer's course was directed well to the North of the container vessel's to allow both vessels room to manoeuvre if required for crossing traffic.

A Northbound ferry was observed leaving Calais and proceeding along the channel before altering course to cross the traffic lanes. Shortly after, it was apparent from the ARPA data, that the container vessel would pass very close to, or collide with the ferry, if no action was taken. The ferry would have passed about seven cables astern of the observer's vessel on her original crossing track.

The ferry called on VHF Channel 16 after flashing the container ship with the Aldis lamp, he asked the container vessel to alter course. The reply was in the negative, the reason given was that the ferry was too close for an alteration to starboard and the observer's vessel was too close for him to make an alteration to port. The ferry made certain observations about the seamanship involved and then took a round turn to starboard.