(Breaking the Deadlock series.)

In our industry, we often hear people talking about specific yacht certifications (LY3, PYC etc…) as opposed to SOLAS, the latter being considered as the certification for ugly dirty cargo ships. While there is a part of truth there, it may be interesting to explain how that all falls together in the end.

Port State Control (PSC).

While each state is free to create specific regulations applicable to their local shipping, their ships run the risk of being prevented from trading abroad if they do not satisfy international rules. That is mainly due to Port State Control, a system allowing states to examine visiting foreign ships on a “no more favourable treatment” base with respect to their own shipping. In most countries, that implies compliance with SOLAS, MARPOL, MLC and other international conventions, while in the United States, that also implies compliance with the appropriate chapter of the “Code of Federal Regulations”.

Building a yacht under SOLAS.

If you want to build a ship strictly to the international rules, there will be a number of requirements that are normally not considered desirable on a yacht. To name a few, high door sills, life boats, no windows on the lower tiers of superstructure, limited hull openings, not to mention bridge windows that should be slanted forward, non smoked and non polarized. Designers will very quickly be faced with the need for some freedom from those requirements. There are three ways to deviate from the set standards: Exemption, equivalent arrangement and waiver.

The first option is an exemption. That is allowed under reg 4 of SOLAS Chapt 1. The main issue for flag states is that they are bound to declare and document any issued exemption to the IMO. An excessive number of exemptions or frivolous ones based on the will to register yachts may be frowned upon by the venerable institution and eventually result in a flag getting bad marks, and possibly being downgraded to a Grey or Black list. Nevertheless, there are issues for which exemptions are regularly granted, such as position of navigation lights, bridge visibility and other non-critical issues, for which a good justification can be provided.

The second option concerns equivalent arrangements. That is allowed under reg 5 of the same Chapt 1. The approval of an equivalent arrangement is based on a risk assessment and agreement on “trade off” to compensate for deviating from the strict requirement and restore a level of safety identical or higher than the one obtained by following the rule. Among the most common examples are the provision of a larger than required amount of life rafts in exchange of life boats. Another one is an increased level of survivability of the ship in case of damage as trade off for windows in the hull sides. There can be larger than allowed combustible materials in some spaces in exchange for a denser sprinkler system… This method requires the most work, but allows quite a large level of flexibility, and principally, does not carry with it the requirement to declare granted arrangements to the IMO. Nevertheless, it is good to have the arrangements carefully documented so that PSC inspectors can satisfy themselves of the maintained safety level.

The third and easiest way is a waiver by the administration to enforce a given requirement. SOLAS expressly states that possibility for administrations in specific rules, but the administration could satisfy itself that waivers can be granted in other cases. There is clearly a risk there as PSC could identify the waiver and call it a deficiency.

REG, MI and other “yacht” flags.

As seen above, the best option is to obtain agreement on equivalent arrangements for the desired deviations. The process is cumbersome and the risk assessments are difficult to pass through class and flag. I was involved in a refit with a list of 37 issues to be passed. The documenting and clearing of those took several months of intense efforts, meetings and communication back and forth.

Some flags of the Red Ensign Group which were traditionally more involved with yachting decided to come together and create a code that essentially is a list of standardized trade offs. They keep their finger on the pulse of yacht design and have advance knowledge of the demands that will be made in terms of arrangements, materials and other particular design features. That has allowed them to produce the original Large Yacht Code. That code is ratified by IMO and the involved deviations can be granted systematically, as long as they strictly follow the code.

After a few years, the same group followed with the evaluation of the case of small passenger ships (maximum 36 pax), and the trade offs that IMO could accept in that case. Passenger ships are notoriously harder to certify than vessels carrying 12 passengers or less.

The Marshall Islands and several other non REG flags have followed the same path and also certify yachts on the base of a code approved by IMO.

The same flags strongly encourage private vessels, in theory exempted from SOLAS, to follow the codes at the design and building stage to protect owners from unexpected PSC problems, but also mainly to guarantee safety at sea. Indeed, if there should be a serious accident, the owner of a yacht that does not follow any code should be ready to do a lot of explaining.

Certification

The code vessel will have a flag certificate of inspection confirming its status, but will also be issued the necessary statutory certificates (cargo ship safety or passenger ship safety), along with a declaration of exemptions granted with reference to the code.

Truth of the matter: Is a code vessel over 500 GT a SOLAS ship?

The answer can only be yes, she is SOLAS, with exemptions under the applied code.

By “local boats”, I mean a boat or ship, built in a particular country, flying the flag of that country, and operated exclusively within the waters of that country. The most obvious examples are Turkish Gulets and Croatian luxury cruise “yachts”, but there are many other countries with extensive territorial waters where the local cruise industry flourishes.

Many of those vessels would be registered under a local code giving them extended possibilities for local trading, but effectively preventing them to enter foreign waters or ports. Most professional buyers or brokers are aware of the need to change the flag or the status of such vessels to operate them in other regions that the ones they were designed for.

Where it is important to be very careful is the case when a vessel has international certificates that appear to be giving her an internationally recognized status. Sometimes, exemptions will be documented within those certificates, but other “deficiencies” may have been ignored or accepted over time in the original flag system, without proper documentation.

The risk here is that the ship could not be flagged under another register without extensive work. Even after that, the ship could still face issues from Port State Control, ITF and other international bodies. Those issues can sometimes be handled, but sometimes, it is just not worth the hassle.

So, whenever a potential buyer considers a ship operated under a local flag: red alert! Get a competent surveyor in to perform a gap analysis towards the intended use by the new owners.

As I was recently catching up on my maritime and yachting news reading, I happened on an article where the famous Cap 437 regulation was still referred-to. That reminded me of amusements and struggles we had to face when participating in the design of helicopter facilities for a recent yacht rebuild.

The yacht already had a landing area of sorts, and the brief was simple: We want a certified landing pad for a 3 ton, 12m D helicopter (say Eurocopter 135). In a first step, together with the naval architects, we asked around and visited some companies who had experience in fitting helicopter landing areas on ships. Most of what we obtained was either impractical, like Cap 437, or required too much retrofit and modifications to what already existed. Those rules are for Offshore installations in the North Sea, in all seasons and almost all weathers. Surely yacht operations can be intrinsically safer. On the other hand, helicopter instructors will often tell you that a pilot can land anywhere he feels comfortable, unless expressly forbidden. So what exactly are the applicable rules?

Back to basics: we have a Panama flagged, SOLAS certified, commercial yacht? Everybody chipped in, the yard, the naval architects, a specialized company that had been approached to certify the helideck, the classification society… We finally agreed with the yard that only SOLAS contained an applicable hard set of rules (Chap II-2 reg. 18). There was nevertheless a set of guidelines from the International Chamber of Shipping, which we found essential to adhere to as the physical requirements stated therein are close to most of the UK regulations. The only setback was that, while Cap 437 refers to the ICS guide for poopdeck landing pads, the ICS all but limit the paragraph on those by stating that they are unsafe and should be avoided if possible. Our yacht having the helideck open to the stern pretty much applies the requirements for an amidships pad with no aft obstructions.

Class was involved in the design of the refueling facilities, but it was a difficult issue between, again, Cap 437 and a set of rules for the containment of flammable liquid cargo on “non tanker” ships such as offshore supply vessels. The yard came up with a proactive solution almost reaching the required capacity but with little additional modifications in the aft part of the ship. There, we have a design. Case closed.

The certification bit, while not strictly necessary, proved harder than the actual building. There were commercial reasons for us to pursue some kind of third party recognition. Added to those were the considerations of obtaining Antarctic permits through the UK administration. In all fairness, since most yachts fall under the Red Ensign Group regulations, it is useful to consider the evolution of yacht helideck regulations in the UK.

The first set of rules for yachts, in LY2, was little more than copy-paste from Cap 437, making it all but impossible for a yacht to be certified without very large “interpretation”. LY3 was a bit better and, finally, the PYC gave a workable set of standards. We agreed with the certification body to apply those with some flexibility where practical. Once that was cleared, they were very smart in their approach and endorsed all our decisions with little fuss. There you go. Case closed. Note that today, the new integrated REG code appears to have even less stringent rules, with more references to outside publications, much more in line with what is achievable and safe on a yacht, but still based on UK aviation standards.

One story, however, illustrates how hard it can be to get through the set habits of people in position to offer a judgement: The helipad was built, certified by class and flag, but still in progress for the third party certification. We had been working out manuals and procedures and I supplied those as final documentation, together with the actual pictures of a helicopter landing on our helipad, the crew at safety stations etc… I had a quite upset reply from the certifying body, with a lot of quotes from CISR (Cayman Islands) regulations explaining how utterly unsafe and dangerous that helicopter operation had been, simply on the base that no certificate had been issued yet. We calmly explained that CISR was not competent in our case, that the operations were totally legal and safe at the location under our flag. The certificate was issued some time later without additional remarks or modifications.