[flurdy]

It's fast, but they were on official navigation training exercise as part of NATO's massive Trident Juncture exercise. I would assume higher speed and quicker decisions are a normal part of that type of training.

That I think is why there were American officers as well on the bridge at the time of the incident as part of cross training.

Which is then disheartening to hear the Maltese registered, Greek owned tankship speak Norwegian, not English, at the time of crisis, and than then same from the onshore vessel traffic service.

Also, you can travel along a huge chunk of the coast of Norway avoiding open seas by being in "fjords", though mostly they are not real fjords just sounds between islands etc.

[dagw]

but they were on official navigation training exercise as part of NATO's massive Trident Juncture exercise.

Where they on a training exercise? The linked VG article makes it sound like the exercise was over and they where on their way home when the accident happened.

[flurdy]

Initial comments from the Navy was that they were going back to port (Haakonsvern), but they later corrected that as wrong. They instead admitted the frigate was instead travelling to another part of the NATO exercise and was using the inland route as training.

https://www.bt.no/nyheter/i/OnOLWO/Forsvaret-beklager-feilin...

[Tor3]

They were. And they were in one of the most busy shipping lanes (due to the port being nearby), and a narrow one. There was no reason in the world why they would have their AIS off. What I wonder is if their own AIS monitor was also off? Why didn't they see the AIS signature of Sola TS and the other ships?

[dagw]

I wonder is if their own AIS monitor was also off? Why didn't they see the AIS signature of Sola TS and the other ships?

According to the commission looking into the accident they did have AIS-monitoring on and had spotted and identified the 3 other ships on their right (which may explain their initial reluctance to turn right, into their path). No one has any good answer as to why they failed to spot/ignored the tanker even as it moved towards them.

[Tor3]

Well.. those other ships weren't really on their right (at that time). They were on their left (as can be seen on the video of the radar monitoring). The reason stated by Helge Ingstad's radio operator for not turning starboard was because of some reefs to their starboard. At the time of the crash those reefs were still 750m away (to starboard) though.

[dagw]

They were on their left

You are of course completely right. I apparently can't read maps or forgotten which hand is which :)

[AnimalMuppet]

I could be wrong, but 750m seems to me to be not very far when traveling 17 knots.

[Tor3]

That's true, however at the time of the collision the dangerous reefs were about 90 degrees to their right. Compared to steering just a vee bit to starboard to avoid the collision the 750m starts looking very wide indeed.