The increasing size of vessels, especially container vessels, poses special challenges for ship’s officers during the operation of berthing or un-berthing. The vessels may be in excess of 400 metres, have fine lines for high speed operation with varying degrees of power availability and a relatively high freeboard.

The demand to maintain slow speed control of these large vessels under varying environmental regimes therefore imposes an extra set of skills on the ship’s officer.

The need for additional training in manoeuvring large vessels is recognised in STCW-95 section B-V/a /2/.

This standard addresses the special competencies needed by Ship’s Officers who are responsible for berthing and un-berthing large vessels with exceptional manoeuvring characteristics.

The scope of this standard is “berthing and un-berthing large vessels”. Other ship-handling competences, related to e.g. port approach, anchoring, etc. are not part of the scope.