“Anchor aweigh”. No retrospective invalidity of NOR.

 

In London Arbitration 16/19 a vessel was chartered on Gencon form which was amended so that notice of readiness (NOR) could be tendered at any time after the ship’s arrival at an anchorage 150 km downriver from the discharge port with passage time from anchorage to discharge port not to count as laytime. The vessel arrived at anchorage and tendered NOR. When the pilot boarded the vessel was found to have only one anchor available which had not been notified in advance to the port authorities. The pilot would only proceed upriver if the owners would hire an escort tug. The owners declined on cost grounds and decided to replace the second anchor instead. The vessel was sent back to the anchorage to do this and then proceeded back to the pilot station with two anchors and from there proceeded to the discharge port and berthed the following day. The owners claimed laytime started with giving of NOR but as a good will gesture discounted the time from when the vessel first weighed anchor to proceed to the pilot station to when the vessel arrived at the discharge port.

The tribunal accepted charterer’s evidence that  two anchors was a normal requirement for river navigation, and that in a case of a missing anchor it was usual and reasonable for a standby tug to be required. However, when the vessel gave NOR, the absence of a second anchor was not an absolute bar, as the possibility existed of proceeding to the discharge port with tug assistance. When the vessel tendered NOR she was not, therefore, in a condition in itself that necessarily precluded her from completing the contractual voyage. It was owners’ later decision not to employ a standby tug that had that effect. Owners’ decision did not retrospectively invalidate the NOR tendered at a time when the vessel was able to proceed to the discharge port, albeit with tug assistance rather than by having two anchors on board.

Owners’ decision not to proceed with an escort tug, on cost grounds, was appropriately addressed by the exclusion of time in the manner adopted in their calculations.

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Professor Simon Baughen

Professor Simon Baughen was appointed as Professor of Shipping Law in September 2013 (previously Reader at the University of Bristol Law School). Simon Baughen studied law at Oxford and practised in maritime law for several years before joining academia. His research interests lie mainly in the field of shipping law, but also include the law of trusts and the environmental law implications of the activities of multinational corporations in the developing world. Simon's book on Shipping Law, has run to seven editions (soon to be eight) and is already well-known to academics and students alike as by far the most learned and approachable work on the subject. Furthermore, he is now the author of the very well-established practitioner's work Summerskill on Laytime. He has an extensive list of publications to his name, including International Trade and the Protection of the Environment, and Human Rights and Corporate Wrongs - Closing the Governance Gap. He has also written and taught extensively on commercial law, trusts and environmental law. Simon is a member of the Institute of International Shipping and Trade Law, a University Research Centre within the School of Law, and he currently teaches at Swansea on the LLM in:Carriage of Goods by Sea, Land and Air; Charterparties Law and Practice; International Corporate Governance.

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