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Laytime

The statement of facts

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A statement of facts (SOF) is the port agent’s record, in time order, of everything that happened to the ship in port. It runs from the moment the ship arrived off the pilot station to the moment it sailed. It is not a formality. It is the evidence. A demurrage claim argued a year later is decided on the SOF, not on what anybody remembers.

What it is, and who signs it

The port agent writes the SOF from the ship’s log, the terminal’s records and what the agent saw in person. The master (the ship’s captain) signs it, and usually the agent does too. Often the shippers, the receivers or the terminal sign as well. Nobody has to sign a document they disagree with. So an SOF signed by three parties is worth much more as evidence than a neat one signed by one.

The SOF records facts and does not calculate anything. It says rain stopped work at 0210 and work started again at 0645. It does not say whether those four hours and thirty five minutes count against laytime (the time the charterer is allowed for cargo work). The charterparty (the charter contract) answers that question later, by applying its rules to the SOF. Keeping these two steps apart is the key rule. If an SOF has already decided what counts, it is no longer a neutral record. It is one side’s argument, and the other side will treat it that way.

The events it records

The order below is the normal pattern of a loading or discharging call. The names differ by trade and by agent. A tanker port talks about hoses, while a bulk terminal talks about the first grab.

EventWhat it establishes
End of sea passage, arrived off pilot station The ship’s own claim that it has arrived. Under a port charter, the dispute about arrival starts here.
Anchored, and where Waiting time, and the evidence of congestion. The place matters: an anchorage inside the port limits gives a different answer from one outside them.
NOR tendered, NOR received The notice of readiness: two separate times, which are often different. Record who received it.
Free pratique (health clearance to enter the port), customs clearance, holds or tanks inspected and passed Whether the notice was true when it was given.
Pilot on board, first line ashore, all fast, gangway down The berthing steps. Waiting for a berth ends somewhere here, and the exact point depends on the clause.
Hoses connected, or first grab, commenced cargo When work really started. This is not the same as when laytime started.
Every stoppage: start, resumption, and the reason The whole claim. See below.
Shifting: unmoored, shifted, all fast again Moving from berth to berth, or from berth to anchorage and back. A clause decides who pays for shifting time, and the clause cannot be applied to a move that nobody recorded.
Draught survey or ullage, sampling, hold or tank inspections in progress Time on board that is not cargo work, but is not idle time either.
Completed cargo, hoses disconnected, last grab The end of laytime, and the start of most time limits for claims.
Documents on board, bills of lading signed Time between the end of cargo work and sailing. Detention claims come from this period.
Pilot on board, unmoored, sailed The end of the record.

An example statement of facts

There is no single required form. BIMCO publishes a Standard Statement of Facts, and many port agents use their own layout. The usual parts are the same four: a header that identifies the call, the events in time order, the stoppages with reasons, and the signatures. The example below is made up. It uses the same port call as the calculation in the next section.

STATEMENT OF FACTS

Vessel        MV EXAMPLE TRADER        IMO        9xxxxxx
Port          Example Port             Berth      No. 4
Operation     Loading                  Cargo      Wheat in bulk
Quantity      26,250 mt per bill of lading
Agents        Example Agency Ltd       Charter    dated 2 March
All times     local time, UTC+2

ARRIVAL AND BERTHING
14 Mar  0700  End of sea passage, arrived pilot station
14 Mar  0815  Anchored, inner anchorage, awaiting berth
14 Mar  0930  Notice of readiness tendered by e-mail
14 Mar  1015  Notice of readiness received by agents
14 Mar  1100  Free pratique granted
14 Mar  2310  Anchor aweigh, pilot on board
15 Mar  0105  First line ashore
15 Mar  0145  All fast, berth No. 4
15 Mar  0220  Hold inspection commenced
15 Mar  0330  All holds passed by shippers' surveyor

CARGO OPERATIONS
15 Mar  0410  Commenced loading, hold 3
16 Mar  0210  Loading stopped: rain, hatches closed
16 Mar  0645  Loading resumed
18 Mar  1750  Completed loading

DEPARTURE
18 Mar  1800  Draught survey commenced
18 Mar  1930  Draught survey completed
18 Mar  2115  Cargo documents on board
18 Mar  2200  Pilot on board
18 Mar  2240  Unmoored, vessel sailed

REMARKS
Weather fine throughout except as stated above.

Master ______________   Agents ______________   Shippers ______________

Read it against the table above. The header identifies the port call and states which time zone the times use. The arrival block lets a reader test whether the notice of readiness was good when it was given. The cargo block holds the raw times for the laytime calculation. The one stoppage has a start, an end and a reason. The remarks line closes the gaps: it states that nothing else stopped work.

How the calculation is assembled from it

A laytime calculation adds up the time between those events. That is all it does, but every argument is about those periods. The calculator takes the start, the end and the excluded time, and turns the difference into money. Here is an example, on a fixture that allows four weather working days:

NOR tendered           14 Mar 0930
Laytime commenced      14 Mar 2130   (12 hours turn time)
Commenced loading      15 Mar 0410
Stopped, rain          16 Mar 0210
Resumed                16 Mar 0645
Completed loading      18 Mar 1750

Elapsed, commencement to completion   3d 20h 20m
Excluded, rain                            4h 35m
Laytime used                          3d 15h 45m
Allowed                               4d 00h 00m
Despatch                                  8h 15m

Every line on the left comes from the SOF. The arithmetic is simple, and claims are not won or lost on it. A claim depends on whether the events were recorded properly, and whether the four hours and thirty five minutes were correctly taken out.

Working from a statement of facts right now?

Neptune Atlas records each SOF event against the fixture in UTC, keeps the reason next to every stoppage, and rebuilds the laytime and demurrage calculation from them. Laytime is included from the Chartering plan (US$99.99 a month), with 7 days free. See laytime and demurrage software or try the free laytime calculator first.

The reason beside a stoppage is the most valuable text in the document

0210 to 0645

Four hours and thirty five minutes when work stopped. Whether the owner or the charterer bears that time depends entirely on the words written next to it. A period with no reason next to it is not evidence. It is a gap.

Look at three versions of the same stoppage:

The same period gives three different bills. That is why you should settle the reason at the time, while the crane driver and the chief officer are both still there. Months later, the argument happens in letters between two claims departments, and nobody in them was at the berth.

Weather needs its own note, because it is the exclusion with the most detailed wording. A weather working day is a day on which the weather allows work. Two questions get different answers in different forms. Does rain count as lost time if no cargo work was planned for that period? And is the whole stoppage excluded, or only part of the day? So record what the weather did, and record whether it really stopped work. Those are facts. The clause then decides how they count.

Five ways a statement of facts is spoiled

  1. A stoppage with no cause. “1410 stopped, 1655 resumed” shows that two hours and forty five minutes were lost, and nobody can say which party is responsible for them. Whoever writes the claim will count that time in their own favour.
  2. Times rounded to the hour when the contract counts in minutes. If an SOF shows every time on the hour, someone has changed the times to make them neat. Once people see that, they ask what else was changed. If demurrage is paid at a daily rate pro rata (in proportion to the time), every minute changes the amount paid.
  3. Local time with no time zone stated. This is the most common hidden error, and the easiest to avoid. Ports change to summer time on their own dates. Ships move their clocks forward or back during a voyage. A document that says 0930 without saying where is useless against a notice given on a different clock. Write the time difference, or write UTC, or write both. It costs nothing at the time, and it cannot be worked out later.
  4. An unsigned copy, or one signature where there should be three. The master’s signature alone proves only the ship’s account of events. It does not prove the terminal accepted it. A copy signed “for receipt only” proves the paper arrived, not that anyone agreed with it, and the two are read very differently.
  5. A remark clause added by one side. Examples: “Signed under protest”, “times as per terminal figures”, “without prejudice to owners’ rights in respect of waiting time.” A remark is useful. It marks a real disagreement at the moment it started, which is better than silence. But it is not agreement. A remark written on one party’s copy after the others signed is worth nothing against them. That is why the desk’s file should hold the version everyone actually signed, not the version that arrived last.

There is one more case: two records exist and they disagree. These are the ship’s own statement of facts and the terminal’s. Neither is automatically right, so get both, keep both, and settle the difference before you work on anything else in the claim.

The claim arrives months after the port call

The people who recorded the SOF have sailed away, changed jobs or forgotten the call completely. The demurrage claim arrives at a desk where nobody was present. It is answered using a document written by someone who was there, and nothing replaces that. A record made at the time by a person at the berth is stronger evidence than anything put together later from e-mails, and every tribunal treats it that way.

So the SOF has to be kept safe. It must stay attached to the fixture, not to the person who handled the voyage. It must be easy to find without knowing which agent sent it or what the file was called. Most forms set a time limit for a demurrage claim, counted from the end of discharge, and require the supporting documents to be sent with the claim. The SOF is one of them. A claim that cannot produce the SOF fails, and nobody even looks at whether it was right.

Spend ten minutes at the time to write the reason next to each stoppage and the time difference next to the clock. This prevents arguments that could otherwise last a year.

Copying a statement of facts into a time sheet by hand is where most errors in a demurrage claim come from. A desk repeats this work on every voyage. How this site imports one explains what the software reads from a scanned document and what it refuses to guess.

References

How to calculate laytime and demurrageWhen the clock starts, what stops it, how the demurrage figure is worked out, and why most claims fail on the paperwork, not on whether they were right. Notice of readinessThe one page that starts the laytime clock: arrived, ready, tendered, and the different way each of those three is challenged. Weather working day in laytimeThree wordings of the same weather exception, and what each one takes out of laytime for the same two hours of rain. Demurrage vs detentionOne is a daily rate agreed before the delay, the other is a loss proved after it. Container shipping uses both words for something else. Who is who on a fixtureA dozen parties, several called the owner and two called the agent. Who gives instructions to whom, and who you may phone.

Neptune Atlas

Neptune Atlas records statement of facts events against the fixture as timestamped entries in UTC with the local offset kept, and each stoppage keeps its reason instead of being quietly subtracted. The laytime calculation is worked out again from those events whenever you need it, so a claim raised months later is answered from the same timeline the desk recorded at the time. Every paid plan starts with 7 free days. A card is needed to start them, and cancelling before they end costs nothing.

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