In the previous article, we explored the gap between incidents that become claims and near misses that remain largely invisible outside the vessel. But even when an incident does occur, another challenge emerges: how do we describe what actually happened?
At first glance, this may seem like a straightforward question. In reality, maritime incidents are often far more complex than a single label can capture.
Where Did the Incident Begin?
Imagine a vessel dragging anchor during deteriorating weather. The vessel begins to move, the crew respond, visibility is reduced and nearby hazards become a concern. Eventually, the vessel grounds. What was the incident? A grounding? A weather event? A navigational issue? A watchkeeping failure? The answer may depend entirely on who is being asked.
The Captain’s Perspective
For a captain, the sequence often matters as much as the outcome. The first sign of trouble may have been anchor movement. Perhaps conditions changed more quickly than expected. Perhaps the holding ground performed differently than anticipated. Perhaps a developing situation was identified but escalated despite corrective action. From an operational perspective, the drag event is the beginning of the chain and the point where the situation started to develop.
The Claims Perspective
Insurance companies approach incidents from a different angle. Claims handling requires events to be categorised, investigated and resolved. As Olivier de Roffignac, Managing Director at Pantaenius Monaco and Head of Claims in the Monaco office, explains: “What initially appears to be a simple anchor dragging event is rarely caused by a single failure. More often, several contributing factors align, including insufficient scope, poor weather anticipation, inadequate anchor watch procedures, crew inexperience or delayed responses to changing conditions.”
From a claims perspective, the final loss often becomes the primary category for investigation and reporting. A vessel may ultimately be recorded as a grounding, collision, contact damage event or liability claim. This is not because the anchoring element is unimportant; it reflects the practical need to organise incidents around their outcome.
Why Visibility Can Change
This distinction helps explain something important about how anchoring risk appears in the data. An event that began with anchor movement may ultimately appear in records as something else entirely. The anchoring element remains part of the story, but it may no longer be the headline.
This is not a criticism of how claims are handled. It is simply how classification systems work. But it does mean that anchoring as a contributing cause is likely underrepresented in industry statistics. The real frequency of anchor-related events in the chain leading to a claim may be higher than the figures suggest. This is worth bearing in mind when assessing how common or uncommon anchoring incidents truly are.
Different stakeholders are also, quite naturally, observing different aspects of the same incident. Captains may focus on how the situation began. Insurance companies may focus on the resulting loss. Investigators may focus on causation. Regulators may focus on compliance. Each perspective serves a different purpose.
More Than a Single Cause
One of the recurring themes in Pantaenius claims experience is that maritime incidents rarely have a single explanation. Gideon Fey, Vice Global Head of Claims at Pantaenius GmbH has observed a rise in anchor dragging claims in recent years and identifies several factors that appear consistently across cases. Over-reliance on electronic anchoring alarms and positioning systems, at the expense of active human monitoring, is one recurring pattern. Inconsistent use of anchor watches is another. Insufficient anticipation of changing weather conditions, for instance by not increasing scope or seeking shelter early enough, also features regularly. And as anchorages become more crowded, particularly in popular Mediterranean bays during peak season, insufficient swinging room between vessels has become a more frequent contributing factor.
The question is often not “what was the cause?” but rather “what combination of factors contributed to the outcome?” This is particularly true when anchoring is involved. Our captain survey reinforces this: 75% of those who reported drag identified weather as a factor, 60% cited poor holding conditions and 20% pointed to interference from a nearby vessel. Rarely is there just one answer.
Why This Matters
Understanding how incidents are classified helps explain why different sources of information can produce very different impressions of risk. Claims databases provide valuable insight into losses. Operational experience provides insight into developing situations. Survey data provides insight into experiences across the industry. None of these sources tells the entire story, but together they offer a more complete picture than any one perspective alone.
Ultimately, the most valuable question may not be whether an incident is classified as an anchoring event, a grounding or a collision. It is simply: what actually happened? Because understanding the sequence of events often provides more insight than understanding the label attached to the final outcome.
Next Article
Once an incident occurs, establishing what happened is not always straightforward. How do captains, investigators and insurance companies reconstruct the sequence of events, and what evidence is most valuable when they do?
About This Series (article 3/6)
This series combines perspectives from professional captains, industry survey data and Pantaenius insurance specialists to explore how anchoring risk is observed, recorded and understood across the superyacht sector. The objective is not to measure risk from a single viewpoint, but to examine how visibility changes depending on where you stand.
