HMNZS Manawanui Final Report

The final report of the Court of Inquiry into the sinking of the HMNZS Manawanui is here.

Key findings areL

• The direct cause of the grounding has been determined as a series of human errors in that the Ship was put on a heading towards land and the autopilot mode was not disengaged to enable the Ship to turn in an easterly direction.
• The correct initial actions for an azimuth thruster failure were not initiated upon realising that the Ship was not responding to the planned starboard turn, the first action being to take the Ship in hand, which means to take the Ship out of autopilot mode.
• The key Ship’s personnel involved in the incident on the bridge were found to have deficiencies in ship qualifications and platform endorsements

So neither of the officers on the bridge realised it was on autopilot. They did not follow the bridge card which would have alerted them to this. And two of the three main officers involved were not endorsed for the ship’s platform, and the other one was endorsed but basically shouldn’t have been!