Always double check that a valve is closed

UK MAIB report on Sea Breeze flooding and abandonment

UK MAIB has issued accident report into the flooding and abandonment of general cargo ship Sea Breeze off Lizard Point, March 9th, 2014.

The report reveals that a ballast pump in the vessel’s engine room was being maintained when water began to enter the space. The crew were unable to stem the flow and the engine room was evacuated. The crew did not deal effectively with the emergency as they had not been trained.

Salvors were able to bring the flooding under control and the vessel was initially anchored in St Austell bay at 2100 on 10 March before being moved to a berth in Fowey. The MAIB investigation identified a very poor standard of engineering being carried out on a ship in materially poor condition.

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The key safety issues identified:

The master, who was the officer of watch at the time, was not aware that the work was taking place and no permit to work had been issued.
A risk assessment had not been completed prior to work commencing, basic contingency preparations were not taken and good engineering practice was not applied.
No on board training or drills had been completed, hampering the crew’s ability to respond effectively to the flooding.
The crew saw no value in safety management and this was symptomatic of a wider absence of any safety culture both on board and within Shipmar.
The sea water inlet valve actuator could jam intermittently, giving the impression that the valve was closed when it was not. The actuator had been poorly repaired in the past leaving the worm and quadrant gearing in an unserviceable condition.

Port ballast system schematic

Ballast pump maintenance

At the time of the accident, maintenance work was being carried out on the port side ballast pump. Sea Breeze had two identical, electrically-driven ballast pumps, one on each side of the engine room, each with a maximum pumping capacity of 150m3/ hour. The starboard ballast pump was also designated as an emergency bilge pump and general service pump. Sea Breeze had 15 dedicated ballast tanks, with a combined capacity of 1504t.

When the chief engineer joined the vessel 9 days before the accident, the mechanical seals for both ballast pumps had been leaking and, as a result, pumping rates were poor. It was taking between 10 and 24 hours to pump out the vessel’s ballast tanks when 5 hours should have been sufficient. The chief engineer had prioritised repairing the pumps and had requested and received replacement mechanical seals from Shipmar.

On 3 and 4 March, while Sea Breeze was on passage from Moerdijk to Liverpool, the chief engineer, motorman and AB had replaced the mechanical seal on the starboard ballast pump. Both pump’s shafts were known to be worn in way of their mechanical seals but the replacement of the seal on the starboard pump had successfully stopped the leakage.

Sea Breeze had been designed and built under the requirements of SOLAS and Germanischer Lloyd (GL) rules, with single valve isolation between the sea chest and the ballast pumps.

Between the isolation valves and each of the ballast pumps was a strainer, on top of which was a bleed nut. These nuts not only facilitated bleeding air out of the strainer following maintenance but also enabled water pressure at the strainer to be released prior to maintenance on the system. There was no evidence that the bleed nut on the port strainer had been opened prior to work being started on the port ballast pump flanges.

Cause of the flooding

The engine room on Sea Breeze flooded because valve A104 port, the single isolating butterfly valve between the port sea chest and the port ballast pump that was undergoing maintenance, was not fully closed prior to work commencing. The chief engineer had attempted to close the valve and believed that it was closed, although he had not checked the valve position indicator before permitting work on removing the ballast pump to start. When the pump body was lifted clear of the pipe flanges, sea water entered the engine room through the exposed 15cm diameter ballast main

When salvage engineers entered the engine room on the morning of 10 March 2014 they found valve A104 port to be open. Although the valve wheel was initially tight, they were able to turn it and close the valve. Subsequent testing of the valve, following its removal from the vessel, showed that the nature of the repair was totally inadequate, and the condition of the worm and quadrant gearing was such that it could jam intermittently. Such jamming caused the hand wheel to become tight, thereby giving the impression that the valve was closed when it was not.

Please click on the report below to read further analysis of the incident