27 Knots in a 10-Knot Harbour: What the Göcek Tender Collision Teaches Every Master About Authority You Don't Use

Göcek Harbour, Turkey — 27 July 2024

After a barbecue where some beer was consumed, the owner's representative proposed taking Isabell's tender to a restaurant reachable only by sea. Isabell's master prompted them to switch on navigation lights before departure, then accompanied as passenger while the owner's representative helmed. Within 30 seconds of clearing the yacht's bow, the tender had accelerated from 8 to roughly 28 knots — in a harbour with a 10-knot limit, published just three days earlier. Nearby, the RIB Vega was drifting with its engine and side lights off, showing only a single all-round white light. A nearby gulet flashed a light to warn the tender; the owner's representative altered course directly towards Vega instead of away from it, and struck it at approximately 27 knots. Vega's passenger, Gullu Torun Vasilev, 28, was trapped beneath the tender's hull and died despite the master jumping in to help free her.

The Authority That Was Never Used

Isabell's master held overriding authority under both the ISM Code and the company SMS — the formal power to stop or override any unsafe action on board, including by an owner or their representative. He did not exercise it as the tender accelerated well beyond a harbour speed limit published days earlier, at night, straight from a lit social setting into a helm seat. MAIB found this deference was likely because the owner's representative held a dual authority position — appointed senior captain by the company chair, and a co-signatory on the master's own letter of authority — making a challenge practically very difficult for a master on his first contract with the company. The company's SMS had never clearly defined the owner's representative's actual authority relative to the master's, leaving exactly the kind of structural ambiguity that makes challenge culture fail in practice, not just in theory.

Recommended Actions

1. Update the SMS to include a specific policy for tender use at night (action taken by Fraser Worldwide S.A.M.)
2. Amend letters of authority to clearly define the master's and the owner's representative's respective authority (action taken by IFZA Ltd)
3. Enforce navigation lights compliance for all harbour traffic via a published inspection regime (action taken by Göcek Port Authority)
4. Extend drug and alcohol policy explicitly to cover recreational tender use, not only bridge watchkeeping

Human Element Analysis

How This Pattern Repeats

See How You'd Handle It

The scenario opens as the tender clears the yacht's bow, already accelerating past the posted limit. What the master does in the next thirty seconds is the first decision point.

What Every Master Should Take From This

• Overriding authority under the ISM Code only protects anyone if it's actually exercised in the moment, not just held on paper
• A published harbour speed limit applies to the yacht's tender exactly as it applies to any other vessel
• Night vision takes 15–20 minutes to adapt — helming at speed straight from a lit environment is operating with degraded vision
• Push for your SMS to explicitly define any owner's representative's authority relative to your own before you need to rely on the distinction

Test Your Knowledge

Think you've got this covered? Put it to the test in Crew Connect's free Knowledge Checker — try a quick COLREGs round and see how you score. Or try the full branching Decision Simulator scenario built from this investigation — work through the real decision points and see which ending you reach.

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