Weather Working Days

A Weather Working Day (WWD) is any working day where weather conditions do not entirely prevent the handling of cargo, or would not have prevented it had work been planned. If weather merely disrupts the loading or unloading process, the day is still classified as a Weather Working Day (WWD), but the Charterers may subtract specific intervals for laytime calculations. The deduction is not automatically equal to the duration of Bad Weather; it must be specifically calculated.

Charterparty Laytime Definitions

According to the Charterparty Laytime Definitions 1980, a working day or a portion of a working day is defined as a period when it is feasible to load or unload cargo without weather-related disruptions, or it would have been feasible if the ship were in position. If such disruptions occur, or would have occurred, the excluded laytime should be calculated based on the proportion of the disruption relative to the potential working time that was or could have been utilized without the interference. This approach explicitly outlines how to calculate the interruption to Laytime.

Notably, if the port’s operational practices do not encompass a full 24-hour workday, then the laytime suspension is not necessarily equivalent to the total time that cargo operations were halted by Bad Weather.

For instance, if normal operational hours are 16 out of 24, including overtime, and Bad Weather hinders 4 hours, then one-fourth of the day’s available working time for cargo is lost due to Bad Weather. Consequently, Laytime is paused for a quarter of the day, amounting to six hours, rather than just the four hours actually lost to the weather. Conversely, if Bad Weather occurs outside of regular working hours when no work was scheduled, the entire day still qualifies as a weather working day and the presence of adverse weather is disregarded.

Alternatively, if good weather prevails during periods when no work is conducted in the port but prevents operations during all working hours, the entire day would not count against Laytime. In another scenario, the term Working Days (Weather Permitting) is used to account for bad weather, allowing for the deduction of any time lost to Bad Weather from Laytime. The primary difference here is that when using ‘Weather Permitting’ rather than defining it as a ‘Weather Working Day (WWD)’, the aforementioned apportionment is not applied. Using ‘Weather Permitting’ alone serves as an exception to Laytime.

Weather Working Days of 24 Consecutive Hours

A clearer approach involves defining Laydays as Weather Working Day (WWD) of 24 Consecutive or Running Hours. In this model, any time that weather impedes cargo operations is deducted, and no apportionment is necessary.

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