The Grounding of the Star Connecticut

posted in: December 1990 | 0

This reconstruction of events the evening of Tuesday, November 6, was stitched together from testimony given to the Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board in hearings under their auspices November 13, 14, and 15.

The Unmooring

6:49 p.m. The captain assumes position on the bridge, preparing for the unmooring. Visibility is clear, the winds are from the northeast from 5 to 15 knots, and swells are 2 to 4 feet. The current, which had been running toward Diamond Head (easterly) between half a knot and one knot, may just now be going slack. The tanker was headed a little more south than west (249 degrees, according to the course recorder).

6:57. The tug Niau puts a line on the port (left) bow and is ready to assist if needed.

7:00. The tanker had been scheduled to unmoor at this time. However, a sheen had been spotted in the area of the single-point mooring and the Coast Guard was alerted to a possible spill of oil. Permission to unmoor was delayed for several minutes while the sheen was investigated. (It was determined that the appearance of a sheen was due to a wind shear. No oil could be found.)

7:08. The work vessel Na`ina is let go on the stern. It had been pulling on the stern to keep the tanker from riding up on the buoy while it was at the mooring.

7:11. By cellular telephone, the Coast Guard’s Marine Safety Office advises Captain Robert Rugur, the mooring master in charge, that the tanker could unmoor.

7:12. With the so-called product hoses having been disconnected earlier (around 5 p.m.), the only link between the mooring buoy and the tanker is a single line. The mooring master, positioned on the bow of the ship, has the con — short for control — of the vessel, and he proceeds to decouple the ship from the mooring by releasing this line. He also orders the ship to start backing away from the buoy — “slow astern” — followed immediately by a half astern order.

7:13. The mooring master orders the ship slow astern, then once more full astern. The ship’s heading is now 290 degrees, or 20 degrees north of due west.

7:17. The pickup line has fallen away from the ship. The vessel is still swinging to starboard (right), and is now on a bearing of 297.

Swinging to Starboard

7:18. Rugur turns the con of the ship back to Captain Pouch. Concerned about the ship’s rapid swing to starboard, Pouch later said, he orders the engines stopped.

(When the Star Connecticut, a single-screw tanker, is backing, as it had been for the last seven minutes, it tends to swing stern to port — or left — and bow to starboard. Additionally, the ship’s steam-powered stern engine is susceptible to overheating when used for periods longer than about six or seven minutes. Thus, when Pouch took back the con of his ship, it would seem that he had been effectively deprived of the option of backing further.)

Pouch then orders the rudder hard left and the engines half ahead, “trying to check the swing,” he testified. His intention at the time “was to bring the vessel around to the south around the buoy.” With momentum being such a large force in the movement of a tanker, his ship would have still been moving backward through the water. A hard left order conceivably should have reversed the starboard swing of the bow by causing the stern to swing to the right.

Also at 7:18, Rugur asks the captain if it is all right to dismiss the tug Niau, tied to the bow. Not yet anticipating trouble, Pouch agrees to let the tug go.

7:19. The bow of the ship is still swinging rapidly to the right. Its heading is 310, or northwesterly. The lookout on the bow reports to the captain a small light on the port bow. Pouch can see two lights, which he takes to be fishing boats.

“I can see the closest one’s lights reflected in the water, so I know he’s close to me,” Pouch later testified. Thus, “I decide to carry on past them before turning south. I do not think I can turn inside them.” Captain Christian Chesley, a PRI mooring master in training who was on the bridge with Pouch, also testified that he saw two white lights, half a mile to a mile south and west of the ship. He believed they were small boats that he had seen earlier in the day. One of them had been fishing in the area, he stated.

Aboard the Na`ina, Captain Will Badgett comments to his crew that the tanker is going in too close to shore.

7:20. Badgett radios the Star Connecticut that he is showing just 38 feet of water under the Na`ina (whose draft is about 10 feet). Pouch acknowledges the alert, but says he has to offload personnel. Pouch later testified that he “didn’t pay a lot of attention” to the warning. “The vessel [Star Connecticut] was drawing thirty-six four, and we had a bit of a swell. So when he gave me 38 feet, I discounted it, because there was enough swell so that I would be bobbing on the bottom.”

The Star Connecticut was not itself equipped with a depth gauge, or fathometer, sensitive enough in shallow waters to be of any use to Pouch. As an attorney for Pacific Resources Inc., George Playdon, later stated, the only way Pouch could determine the depth of the water he was in was to order the chief mate to cast a lead line or to get an accurate fix of the ship’s position.

7:22. Pouch is maneuvering to get past the buoy, but he cannot see the pickup line and is worried that it might get caught in his propeller. He asks the tug Niau to try to locate it with a spotlight. The Niau shines a light on the water, but no line is visible.

Badgett, on the Na`ina, overhears the Niau inform the Star Connecticut by radio that it was clear of the pickup lines at this time. Captain Pouch said he did not recall this.

7:24. The Nene, which had been holding the product lines out from the mooring in a southerly direction, is asked to come alongside the Star Connecticut to pick up Assistant Mooring Master Chesley.

7:25. Pouch orders the ship dead slow ahead and, at 7:25.9, he stops it. “Since I can’t find the pickup line, I don’t want to get it caught in my wheel and I’m drifting past my best guess as to where the pickup line is.” The rudder is hard left still, and the ship’s heading is 337, or just 24 degrees west of due north.

Losing Ground

7:27. The Keoki, a water taxi, is trying to come alongside to pick up Mooring Master Rugur, a gauger, and the ship’s agent, with their bags and paraphernalia.

According to Mooring Master Rugur, the Keoki cannot keep up with the tanker’s “moderate” speed. Rugur requested the captain to give the Keoki “starboard lee.”

7:32. At this time, Pouch testified, “I’m half ahead. The ship swings north to make a lee for the embarking people and equipment.”

The chief mate of the Star Connecticut recalls there being from six to 10 lifts of gear, samples and baggage from the deck to the Keoki. This “slowed things down,” he later testified. All of it could have been transferred much earlier, while the ship was still moored, he said later.

The ship’s heading is 330 (west and north).

7:33. “I stop,” Pouch testified. “The Keoki is trying to get alongside and debark three people… I then have to debark one of the other mooring masters on … the tug Nene.”

7:40. Pouch orders the engines half ahead and the rudder hard left, toward sea.

7:41. “I’m full ahead. I announce on the VHF to the attending vessels to keep clear as I’m turning to south whether they have all people on board or not.”

‘I Feel a Ripple’

7:44. The Star Connecticut makes initial contact with the reef. “I feel a ripple,” Pouch testified. “The vessel shakes a little. We were at full ahead, and then I go full astern. The vessel’s heading is 274.”

7:45. Pouch orders the third mate to fix the ship’s position.

7:53. With the ship heading at 243 (southwesterly), Pouch orders the engines full ahead, then all stop. The vessel is no longer moving.

7:59. Pouch orders the engines full astern. The vessel is still not moving.

8:05. The engines are ordered to stop. With the ship headed to the west and south (255 degrees), the Star Connecticut is hard on the reef.

Captain Pouch is informed that the aft pump room is flooding, and that the empty double tanks under the engine room are filling with water.

8:20 or thereabouts. After seeing to the safety of his ship and crew, Pouch informs the Coast Guard that the Star Connecticut is taking on water.

Volume 1, Number 6 December 1990