Disputes arose under a NYPE T/C providing for “BOR [bunkers on redelivery] to be same as actually on board on delivery”. Finding that the required LSFO was unavailable at the redelivery port, Charterers proposed to replenish with LSMGO instead, which Owners declined quoting technical concerns. The Tribunal upheld Owners’ right to damages, Charterers bearing the risk of LSFO unavailability at the final discharge port. Nor did Owners’ duty to mitigate extend to accepting the non-contractual performance tendered. Damages were based on the shortfall amount, at LSFO prices encountered on the next employment, plus the additional cost of LSMGO necessarily consumed in reaching it.

A Voyage C/P provided that loading laytime was to cease from 1700 hours before until 0800 after a “public holiday”. Owners disputed the interruption of laytime at Paranagua for the “Corpus Christi” holiday on the grounds that it did not appear in the BIMCO calendar. The Tribunal found that the BIMCO calendar was not definitive on the point and accepted instead Charterers’ evidence (from the Brazilian Embassy in London website) that Corpus Christi was one of the public holidays observed throughout Brazil.

In a T/C dispute involving a laden passage from Venezuela to Italy, Charterers alleged ‘unreported’ voyages near the load port and Gibraltar, misrepresentations (BOD and consumption) and underperformance, and deducted from hire. The Tribunal found disclosure failings: Owners’ logs were variously illegible or incomplete, the oil record book was withheld; Charterers did not volunteer their contemporaneous weather routing report, relying instead on a reconstruction by their expert. Nevertheless, the Tribunal found that Master’s noon reports were not ‘wildly’ inaccurate, and neither the contemporaneous evidence nor Charterers’ expert evidence supported any of their allegations. Owners’ hire claim succeeded, and Charterers’ cross claim failed, each in full.

Charterers under an NYPE T/C, challenged the delivery time specified by Owners, stating that the AIS had been turned off some 442 nm away and the Vessel could not have covered that distance in the intervening period. Owners’ argument that the Vessel speeded up was rejected as the logs produced in support were unconvincing (all in the same hand, allegedly produced from memory without aid of rough logs). Charterers failed however on their performance claim by not meeting a provision requiring their evaluation to be submitted latest 15 days after the passage in question.

Under a T/C with maximum duration to mid-December 2019, Charterers redelivered late, in February 2020, with 165 MT HSFO (by then out-lawed by the IMO fuel regulations in force 1.1.20). Owners claimed in respect of post-redelivery time and cost of a trip to de-bunker, relying on cl. 10, which set out a sliding scale of permitted redelivery HSFO quantities to be endeavoured. The Tribunal dismissed Owners’ claims based on cl.10 (due to its non-mandatory nature) and on an implied term requiring zero ‘un-burnable’ ROB after 31.12.19 (as the situation was contemplated by neither party). However, ruling that rate differential was not the only measure of late-redelivery damages, the Tribunal held that cl.10 meant that de-bunkering was within the contemplation of the parties and resulting expenditure recoverable by Owners.

As part of a trade of shipping parcels of wheat from a Black Sea port to Turkey, Charterers engaged the subject Vessel. In repudiatory breach, Owners failed to perform the C/P. Charterers claimed (i) substitute vessel freight differential and (incongruously) (ii) storage charges for one less parcel shipped. Both claims were dismissed. The ‘substitute’ was in fact a vessel already chartered by and performing the trade for Charterers, having loaded and sailed before Owners’ repudiatory breach and before the subject Vessel would have arrived to load, so its freight rate was not reflective of a higher market rate at any material time. Storage charges, if ever incurred (this seemed unlikely as the ‘substitute’ - one of a stream of Charterers’ vessels - had carried the parcel) were equally irrecoverable as they pre-dated the repudiatory breach and could not have been caused by it.