One of the rare reports such detailed, especially regarding the use of ECDIS and other electronic means (123 pages).
There was no harm neither to the crew nor to the ship.
The forum speculated about the incident, three years ago >>>
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Gosh that was an interesting read.
Not really the ECDIS technically but the reality of a busy port with large ships and tidal windows.
It’s all behind me now but with the announcement that our main container terminal is going ahead with its expansion from 4 to 6 berths ( only 3 when I was working, oh and plus the other 2 further up the river, oh and the feeder berths inside the lock ) Add to that all the other traffic I wish the Guys and Gals who are currently in tenure all the very best.
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Lucky us, we can give it all a bird eye view from the comfort of our retirement armchair including cholering and screaming at nintendo generation. 
Add to it just in time and virtual arrivals and the picture looks promising and will make all us busy here.
Yup 
There’s a lot in that report, bottom line seems to be the workload too high. The pilot had to spend a lot of time on the phone wrt other ship departure times/delays
On the Elbe (from the report, section 4.5 Pilot Allocation) with similar workload situation two pilots are used, the second mainly to deal with communication.
An “ALT+F” search for "third officer’ turns up some interesting material.
At 2258, the third officer quietly voiced his concerns concerning the close approach to buoy 3a
Internal communication (content, topics), language barriers and a lack of technical resources (no dedicated MFD) meant that the third officer could not perform his duties as co-navigator and “safety barrier” effectively.
We would also have 2 pilots on that size of ship.
Your comments about the 3/0 are interesting. The Triple E class which Mumbai Maersk is has a similar bridge set up to many other modern ships.
The 2 conning stations central in the wheelhouse encourage 2 people to interact. Conversely it does tend to exclude a third person. I don’t know where this convention can from but I found that as pilot I normally was invited to the port side seat while the Captain occupied the starboard one. The OOW would then have to kind of roam around and was not naturally involved in the decision making process.
Before the inception of Ultra Large Container Ships I would always make sure I interacted with The Captain all through the Pilotage. With the introduction of a second pilot a conscious effort had to be made initially to not exclude The Captain.
So trying to integrate an OOW as well took quite an effort.
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From the report:
The third officer was using the Planning ECIDS (station 2) which, had no dedicated MFD (so-called multi-function displays).
So as you can see quite remote from the main conning position.
I don’t recall but position 2 may be behind a screen so even more cut off.
I found it interesting that auto-pilot was in use at all while under pilotage. I’ve
never seen anything other than hand-steering when a pilot has the conn. Is that
sort of thing particular to ultra-large ships?
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The Captain’s of the Triple E class insist that the auto pilot is better than a helmsman.
Even at the pain of falling out with these guys I always insisted on a helmsman to make any large alterations which we had to do several times in or out.
I did concede to allowing autopilot on the straight bits.
Edit to add.
Only Triple E Maersk ships , all others were happy with hand steering
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If the second maté’s voyage plan had escaped criticism then they should erect a statue of him at the marine training school he trained at.
It is not the 1950’s and we should crew and equip these behemoths the same as your average cruise ship. The money and the damage that such a vessel can inflict on the environment is commensurate with its size. The cost of an extra officer, ECDIS, cameras, an extra pilot etc compared to the freight on an extra 10,000 teu is negligible.
The port working with the shipping company should have established a point where entry was aborted if circumstances prevented a clear berth. A 12 hour delay would develop a more discipline to traffic control.
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We were extremely fortunate when our new deep water terminal opened that could take this size of ship.
It was a big step up from the 300m ships that could use our existing container terminal.
We knew this was a game changer and as it was brand new we could implement procedures from day one with just one operational berth.
There was no mission creep like other existing ports had with ships getting 20m longer and 1m deeper. We were going up full 100m and up to 3m in max draft.
Having said this we still had to dig out heels in on certain things such as 2 pilots and minimum number and bollard pull of tugs.
We were also acutely aware that we were in competition with other established ports one of which was just on our doorstep with a much shorter pilotage and less fierce tidal streams.
One advantage we did have was that due to the tidal windows at our old berth we were used to a quick turnaround on the berths with one out, one in and repeat for the 2 berths over a high water so we scheduled ships one hour apart.
We managed to carry this over to the new terminal when more berths were opened so 1 hour after a scheduled departure the next one was coming alongside as the tidal window was not so critical.
When I finished 3 years ago we had 3 berths operating at full capacity from a very slow start. 1st berth opened 2015.
There has been a recent announcement that they are going ahead with the expansion to full capacity from 4 berths to 6 due to open in the next couple of years.
So while our priority is always ships safely we can’t pretend that there is not a commercial consideration as we do want our port to be successful as it protects our future employment.
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That turned into a long post but unfortunately there is more 
The first tranche of Ultra Large pilots were hosted by the Bremerhaven docking pilots and we spent 5 days over there in batches of 2 or 3 to observe and more importantly talk to the German Pilots as Bremerhaven is very similar to our port so I do know Bremerhaven.
We implemented good communications between the terminal operators and our duty Pilot in charge of the port on a day to day basis.
This did not always work perfectly and a few grey hairs were developed particularly with late departing ships but due to our insistence on tug numbers and dedicated tugs for arrival and departing ships it mostly worked well.
In the Mumbai Maersk report I can just see myself in the place of the Sea Pilot and having to deal with all that was going on that night but I would have the luxury of a second equally qualified pilot to deal with a lot of it while the other concentrated on conning the ship
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They collectively agreed she was not turning fast enough and would either over run or pass south of the 3b buoy. Surely putting the port engine half astern would have tightened the swing enough to get out of trouble?
A good question but in my limited experience the length of the hull versus the distance between the propellers means there is not much turning effect to be had. I don’t know whether she had inward or outward turning screws. The former is more efficient for propulsion but poor for manoeuvring.
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Of course not.
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Not a good idea!!
But is it close to today’s reality?
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It is where the reality is heading where “gaming virtual reality community” is taking over from dying out “real life community” but it looks to me it will be important step on the way to full or partial autonomy .It will surely be labelled as important & usefull “aid” to enhance so called situational awareness.
Testing is best done on guinea pigs as simulators do not always give all the answerws.
My idea re safety although already useless is to make the use of mobile phones on the bridge criminal .
The reality is probably that both the screen and the person will be moved ashore in the not too far future.
The first baby steps has already been taken in that direction, but the full implementation of unmanned vessels in worldwide operation is still some decades away. (Unless we can get rid of those damned Engineers quicker)
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