The sad accident of Sanchi

Wrote by wuaihangyun website  and translated by C-V Service.Co.ltd.

After the incident, many professional and would-be professionals working in the ocean shipping industry have been used to log on to the AIS tracking website to find out what happened before the collision of the Iranian tank ship SANCHI.

New clues!Although the collision time is 20 PM on January 6, but can find "SANCHI”on the last track, no more than 1 month at the latest 19:43 on January 5, the position is not far north of the Diaoyu islands.

That is to say, the "SANCHI" AIS signal disappeared for a whole day, there is 240 nautical miles from the disappearance  point of Taiwan to the collision site of the Yangtze river estuary.

For a while, many people speculated that the Iranian oil tanker had deliberately shut down the AIS in order to sneak away from USA.

It's similar to MH370 incident, captain of a climb to the normal level, leaving Singapore air traffic control area, turned off the ads-b transponder illegally , including ACARS communication addressing and reporting system, cut off contact with the outside world, not report their position anymore.

He drove the co-pilot with excuse and closed the hatch, then went into the darkness and carried out the "perfect crime".

Many have speculated that the actual destination of the Iranian oil tanker, which contains 130,000 tons of gas condensate, should be north Korea, which has already been banned by the United Nations.

In this case, it would be no surprise that it closed the AIS to play stealthily, leading to a collision in the busy east China sea. The logic seems reasonable.

Is it true that Iran has an affair with north Korea? Why can't you find the track of it in the east China sea? This is doubtful.

In fact, just for comparison, to check the "CF CRYSTAL" on the other side of the collision, it will be found that the ship came from the United States and disappeared in the Mahai strait after it was stopped in Busan, South Korea.

It also appeared in the crash site about 20 hours later, only to re-emerge in the AIS system two days later.

If you are willing to look at other ships passing through this area, you will find that break point and disappearance are normal when the ship passes here.

In fact, the destination of SANCHI is clear, not Kim's north Korea, but Taesan, South Korea's west coast.

The giant petrochemical complex here is one of the three largest petrochemical complexes in South Korea, including Samsung Total, Hyundai, Rakuten and Mitsubishi.

Under normal circumstances, it must ensure that the AIS system is in real-time open state when a oil tanker passes through the busy area of the east China sea. Besides, this is an inflammable and explosive dangerous chemical vessel. The crews should be aware of the importance to open AIS system.

Although the sea AIS signal cannot be transmitted back to shore and the Internet, there are witnesses in the east China sea. The Beijing news interviewed the 13 crew members of the fishing ship, which was involved in the rescue at the time, and partially restored the site.

On 19:51January 6 , when in 160 nautical miles (300 km) east of the Yangtze estuary, west to return to the mainland, they finished fishing from south to north of Iran's oil tanker "Sanchi” on the tail, while the "CF Crystal" coming from the northeast to the west.

The captain Zheng lei, who was on duty in the driver's cab, found the situation wrong according to the information on the AIS chart, and felt that the two ships must have collided.

After 20 minutes, the fishing ship had sailed to the southwest three miles, and sure enough, it had been hit.

Iran captain distress call water dedicated 16 channels, began to shout "May Day May Day" (radio distress signal: save me/help), heard a few into several Iranian anxious cries. Then no sound anymore.

Captain Zhenglei

The fishing ship ventured near, took the collision vessel round for rescue. The 21 crew members of the "CF Crystal" who boarded the lifeboat were found, one by one pulling on the small fishing boats.

He later searched the scene for hours without finding any the Iranian crew (who later recovered the body of a lifejacket with the bodies of two crew members).

According to instructions from the Marine department, the fishing ship transferred 21 Chinese crew members to the "Donghaijiu 101" on the next morning. Later re-boarded the CF Crystal ship with ship“Donghaijiu 118” escort on 8^th.Jan. And sent to Zhoushan port by the tug on 10^th Jan.

According to witnesses, something is crash in the first two ships no notice, no radio to communicate, so straight crashed into - It's always with both ship drivers crying in common collision accident,but not this time.

In general, the captain sets a few nautical mile alarm rings based on AIS and radar information, and alerts are automatically issued once other ships enter the area. Although the alarm will go on and on  due to the ships are frequent in Chinese coast , some ships often turned off, but should be more  strengthened to understand and instrument control.

When the ships are close to each other, the pilots of the two ships will communicate via VHF (ship VHF) to discuss what actions they will take to make the ship pass safely.

The strange is that it happened around 20 p.m. shift. Usually the merchant ship is in three shifts, three shifts on duty every four hours, and then rest for eight hours. The shift will take place 20 minutes before the shift.

It is the time for shift with a relatively more people, basically not sleep, but why is there a fatal collision? Are they busy with shift work and negligence?

In addition, since the small fishing ship are brave enough to rescue, why did the crew of "CF  Crystal" abandon ship? The collision at the bow did not endanger the stability, structure and safety of the 225m vessel.

As for the impact of the fire, part of the ship's bow, it can be in time to return, why should be hurry abandon ship?

As China's maritime bureau has set up a focus in the accident investigation team, in addition to the "CF  Crystal" crew on inquiry, more accurate, more impartial evaluation, or by two ship "black box" to complete.

Two days before the ship went down, the fireman ventured to take back the VDR (Voyage Date Recorder)

System system according to the VDR on performance standards, VDR should be real-time continuous recording the data of ship at least 12 hours, including position, course, bridge speech, communication, alarm, rudder order and response, telegraph and response, hull hatches, watertight doors, fire doors open closed condition, wind direction and wind speed, and at least every 15 seconds a radar image, and so on. The information is very informative.

As long as got the VDR on the ship, what's going on and what's going on around will be clear.

According to the rules of preventing collisions at sea, the principle of "let right" should be handed back in the same way as the traffic rules on the road. Iranian ships should take more responsibility (and Chinese vessels also have them), and if the two sides can hit the right and slow down in time, they can avoid a collision.

Unfortunately, the avoidance did not happen. Photos from the spot, is from east to west "CF Crystal"  bow, hit from south to north "Sanchi” on the front of the starboard side of the" third class soft rib, ran out of a hole and lead to damaged tank, flammable gas condensate immediately burst into flames.

Then there was the strong north wind, and Sanchi was sailing against the wind.The smoke, the gas,and the fire from leaked oil engulfed the rear building quickly .

Within half an hour of the accident, the massive detonation and the spread of the gas on the tanker had caused the crew to die, unfortunately prematurely ending the voyage of life.

The ending is deplorable. We mourn the death of 30 Iranian sailors and two bangladeshi sailors!

Answer the other questions concerned, one is the problem of the remaining fuel on board. According to data provided by the Iranian maritime organization, "Sanchi" loaded 1956 tons of heavy oil and 118 tons of diesel oil,sailed from Iran's Asalouyeh on December 16 . But after 20 days of sailing, most of them has been consumed.

In addition, the sea depth of the sunken ship is 120 meters, which does not affect the voyage of the ship. If there is no special case, the salvage operation would be stopped.

A large number of Chinese rescue ships failed to extinguish the fire in 8days (from 7th to 14^th.Jan), but watched the ship explode and sank.Are they incompetent?

There are following difficulties, first the hull structure is broken, the continuous high temperature, condensate oil flammable volatiled, the  low flash point, keep leaking, exploded from time to time.

In addition, during the rescue, the cold wave came to the south, lasted 7-8 gale wind for several days, tens of thousands of tons of giant ship has been drifting southeast direction, unable to be fixed.

The final sinking position is 151 nautical miles (280 km) from the collision.

Faced of 130,000 tons of "natural gasoline", a fireboat carried hundreds of tons of foam is difficult to cope with, only local control of the effect of the fire, and back to the port for supplement with multiple trips.

In the end, as the volume of empty space and the oxygen content increased, the explosion energy became larger and larger, and the oil tank was eventually destroyed by explosion, which caused the continuous burning and damage of adjacent oil tanks and finally sank.

China's search and rescue forces are doing their best.

According to one of the days of aerial field of article, 2 Chinese fireboat and 1 Japanese  fireboat  can be seen in the picture, 2 Chinese fire fighting are chasing the fire sprinkler "Sanchi “

The Japanese fire boat was far away, pretended to spray water.Shame!

In the rescue, four aid workers Xu Zhentao, Xu Junlin, Lupin, Feng Yajun from Shanghai bureau seized the fleeting time and recovered the VDR equipment with huge security threat,based on the high temperature "Sanchi", which reduced the amount of time for find black box, shortening the period of the investigation of the accident. What a stunning heroes!

Finally, since wiht both sides of the VDR equipment, as well as a full crew survived, the disaster accident of the cause of the accident should be quickly to find out, what party or both parties responsibility will be clear.

The incident is very serious accident, perhaps in the near future the world maritime organization set stricter laws and regulations on tankers, LNG and chemical tanker transportation, as far as possible to avoid similar events happen again. And to comfort the martyrdom.