MLC 2006 and STCW hours of rest: the rules, the records and the usual PSC findings

What are the MLC 2006 hours of rest rules?

The MLC 2006 rules are in Regulation 2.3 and Standard A2.3. Each flag State must set either a maximum on hours of work or a minimum on hours of rest, within these limits:

• maximum hours of work: 14 hours in any 24-hour period and 72 hours in any seven-day period; or
• minimum hours of rest: 10 hours in any 24-hour period and 77 hours in any seven-day period.

Hours of rest may be divided into no more than two periods, one at least six hours long, and the interval between consecutive rest periods must not exceed 14 hours. "Hours of rest" means time outside hours of work and does not include short breaks, so a coffee break in the middle of a cargo watch is not rest.

Two points catch people out. First, "any 24-hour period" is a rolling window, not a calendar day; the ILO confirms that the 24 hours starting at 2000, at 2100 and at midnight must each contain at least ten hours of rest. Second, the two MLC options are not identical: a 72-hour working week leaves 96 hours of rest, well above the 77-hour minimum. Check which standard your flag has adopted.

A worked example of the rolling 24 hours

Both calendar days show 10 hours. But the 24 hours from 1800 on Day 1 contain only 6 hours of rest, and the gap from 1800 to 1000 is 16 hours: two non-conformities a calendar-day check would miss.

What do the STCW hours of rest requirements add?

STCW Regulation VIII/1 and Section A-VIII/1 of the STCW Code apply the same daily and weekly minimums to officers in charge of a watch, ratings forming part of a watch, and anyone with designated safety, prevention of pollution and security duties. The Regulation also requires watch systems to be arranged so that the first watch at the start of a voyage, and each relieving watch, is sufficiently rested and fit for duty.

These limits came in with the 2010 Manila amendments, in force from 1 January 2012, which aligned STCW with MLC 2006. The Code also requires posted watch schedules and daily rest records in a standardised format.

What exceptions to hours of rest does STCW allow?

STCW lets a flag State allow exceptions, but only within tight limits. If your flag permits them, the rest may be reduced as follows:

1. Weekly rest may fall to no less than 70 hours in any 7-day period.
2. The weekly exception may not run for more than two consecutive weeks, and the interval between two exception periods must be at least twice the length of the exception.
3. Daily rest may be split into no more than three periods, one at least 6 hours and neither of the others less than 1 hour.
4. The interval between rest periods still must not exceed 14 hours.
5. Exceptions may not extend beyond two 24-hour periods in any 7-day period, and should take account of the fatigue guidance in Section B-VIII/1.

Under MLC 2006, exceptions need national law or an authorised or registered collective agreement, and should follow the Standard as far as possible. Either way, an exception is a flag decision, not a company's choice; keep the flag's written provision on board.

Separately, the Master may suspend rest schedules for the immediate safety of the ship, persons on board or cargo, or to help other ships or persons in distress. Once the situation is normal, anyone who worked in a scheduled rest period must be given adequate rest. STCW also relieves the rest requirement in an emergency or other overriding operational conditions, but some administrations do not accept routine port arrivals, departures or cargo work as "overriding".

How do drills, musters and call-outs affect rest hours?

Drills and musters count as work. Both MLC and STCW require musters, fire-fighting and lifeboat drills, and other mandatory drills, to be conducted in a way that minimises disturbance of rest periods and does not induce fatigue. The 2010 STCW text excuses only emergencies and other overriding operational conditions, not drills. National rules differ, so check your flag's rules and your Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).

A seafarer on call, such as the duty engineer with an unattended machinery space, must get adequate compensatory rest if call-outs disturb their rest. In practice, record each call-out as work and plan drills around watch changes and port calls.

What hours of rest records are required?

Both conventions require two things on board: a posted table of shipboard working arrangements, and individual daily records of hours of work or rest.

The IMO/ILO guidelines give model formats that account for every hour and are designed to show non-conformities. The table only describes the normal routine; compliance is proved by the records.

Vetting goes further. SIRE 2.0 question 3.4.1, a core question, expects a company procedure, a system that calculates conformity over any 24 hours and 7 days, notes of duties done outside normal hours, monthly non-conformity reports to shore, and evidence that shore management acknowledged "significant" non-conformity (3 or more days with a non-conformity for an individual in any 30 days). The inspector compares rest records with logbooks for a recent operation of up to three days.

What hours of rest deficiencies does PSC find?

Record keeping is the classic finding. The Tokyo MOU's final report on the 2014 joint Concentrated Inspection Campaign (CIC) on STCW hours of rest, run with the Paris MOU and published in November 2015, gives these figures (tables 1 to 3 and 10):

• deficiency code 01308, records of seafarers' daily hours of work or rest, made up 997 of the 1,589 campaign-related deficiencies (62.7%);
• 16 ships were detained in the Tokyo MOU region and 16 in the Paris MOU region for campaign-related deficiencies.

The campaign questionnaire asked whether watch schedules were posted, whether rest met the weekly minimum, whether on-call seafarers received compensatory rest, and whether watchkeepers would be rested for the first watch after departure. That last point can justify detention until the rest has been taken.

Why do hours of rest records get falsified?

Records are usually adjusted because the honest version looks like a failure. Common pressures:

• workload around port calls, cargo, bunkering and inspections that the manning and the table were never built for;
• non-conformities treated as crew misconduct rather than as information;
• commercial pressure to sail on time, with rest the easiest thing to sacrifice;
• recording at the end of the week or month from memory, or copying the posted schedule;
• clock changes and date line crossings that the recording tool handles badly.

The result is a record that is perfect and wrong. Inspectors look for exactly that: SIRE 2.0 tells them to check rest records against logbooks for a recent port call, strait transit or tank cleaning. A record that contradicts the deck log is a worse finding than an honest, reported breach, and it hides the fatigue risk the rules exist to control. IMO's Guidelines on Fatigue (MSC.1/Circ.1598) treat fatigue as a risk to manage, which only works with true data.

How can ship managers fix hours of rest compliance?

Fixing rest hours is a planning and culture task more than a form-filling one:

1. Build the table from real operations, including port rotations and cargo work, not just a sea-passage routine.
2. Record daily. End-of-month entries are guesses.
3. Use a system that checks rolling 24-hour and 7-day windows, including clock changes and the 14-hour interval, and flags breaches before they happen.
4. Plan port calls and drills around rest. Look ahead at arrival times, pilotage and cargo hours, and rest people before them.
5. Treat non-conformities as data. Review them monthly ashore, act on repeat patterns by rank, vessel or operation, and adjust manning or work planning where needed.
6. Make honest reporting safe. Masters and crew should never be blamed for recording a genuine breach.
7. Confirm your flag's position on exceptions in writing, and apply them only within those limits.
8. Test records in internal audits. Compare a sample of rest records with deck and engine logs for a busy period, as a SIRE 2.0 or PSC inspector would.

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