Shipowners’ Club Publishes Two New Guidance Booklets

The Shipowners’ P&I Club added two new booklets to its range of loss prevention publications for the guidance of vessel owners and their crews: “Tides” and “Towards Effective Navigation.”

The club’s publications highlight best practice, good seamanship and sensible practical operational procedures in order to help reduce the incidence of property and vessel damage by raising operating standards.

The new booklets with their simple, concise and clear text and diagrams are an essential tool for small vessel operators trading in coastal waters and harbors and are designed to complement the usual statutory safe navigation rules documentation.

Tides
According to the Shipowners’ Club, the purpose of this booklet is to allow the seafarer to have a better understanding of how to undertake tidal calculations. Hari Subramaniam, Shipowners' Deputy Loss Prevention Manager explained, "This is a major contributing factor towards groundings where the majority of our Members’ vessels operate within coastal waters, harbors and ports. Our analysis of the claims causation has highlighted the fact that many recent grounding claims could have been avoided by simply following this basic technique.”

Towards Effective Navigation
The aim of this booklet is to open the window on navigation in a very basic way. It is aimed primarily at those mariners who are not fully trained in the art of navigation and it is hoped that this booklet will offer a better understanding of the subject. Shortfalls in such knowledge include positional and directional references; using gyro and magnetic compass; bearings; and reading charts. The booklet covers all of these, as well as providing an exhaustive reference list of nautical publications.

Hari Subramaniam commented, “Our Ship Inspection Program often highlights the fact that crews have a limited understanding of the rudiments of basic navigation and we also see claims arising where poor navigation is a main contributing factor. A better understanding of the subject will hopefully go some way towards reducing the incidence of these claims.”

The Club is indebted to the author of both publications, Captain H. Subramaniam, a distinguished member of the nautical teaching profession in India having trained mariners for over 34 years in obtaining their professional licenses.

The booklets are particularly aimed at ordinary crew members - Tides is published in English, Bahasa and Thai and Towards Effective Navigation in English, Spanish, Bahasa and Thai.

shipownersclub.com