WASHINGTON - Minutes after a freighter sideswiped the Bay Bridge in dense fog the morning of Nov. 7, a distraught harbor pilot told the captain: "Sorry, I misunderstood the chart. I thought that was the center," referring to the midpoint between the bridge's two towers.
"Everyone is going to be descending on me quickly," pilot John Cota added, according to transcripts of the ship's voice data recorder unsealed by the National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday. "Yeah, it's foggy. I shouldn't have gone. It's still, uh - I'm not going to do well on this one."
The ship's impact caused a 53,000-gallon oil spill that fouled beaches from Marin to Contra Costa to San Mateo and killed more than 2,000 birds.
The 3,000 pages of new documents and testimony at a hearing that began in Washington D.C., fill in details of a hectic morning in which Chinese crew members worried aloud about setting out in thick fog and their Bay Area pilot becoming confused about where he was heading minutes before hitting the bridge support tower.
At Tuesday's wide-ranging hearing, the NTSB focused attention on the key role of Cota, who has pleaded not guilty to criminal negligence for his actions guiding the 901-foot Cosco Busan out of Oakland. The ship's captain and the Coast Guard's vessel traffic service also came under scrutiny.
As the ship was leaving port, crew members speaking Chinese said they were surprised at that decision. "For American ships under such
Pilot, captain decline
Cota, Capt. Sun Mao Cai, and three crew members decided not to testify at the hearing, which will continue today. Only Cota has been charged in the incident.
The NTSB hearing also delved into others involved in the accident, from the Coast Guard advisory system for ships navigating the bay to the on-board radar and other equipment.
Several NTSB members also were critical of the initial low assessment of the spill by the Coast Guard. The agency first reported less than 150 gallons in the water, which may have contributed to a slow response.
At one point, NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker poured some crude oil into a Mason jar of water, demonstrating how the oil broke up into small globules "to show how catastrophic this spill was."
The Coast Guard's vessel traffic service, which monitors and advises ships from Yerba Buena Island, contacted Cota that morning as he steered off course, but did not sound a warning. Cota's lawyer last week said the Coast Guard must share some blame for the accident.
But the Coast Guard service, unlike an air traffic controller, is only advisory, Lt. Cmdr. Kevin Mohr testified. He said an internal investigation showed the service "could have done better, but did nothing to contribute to the incident."
NTSB members and investigators also examined the interaction of Cota and the ship's captain. Captains usually defer to pilots, who have the local knowledge of channels and conditions, but the responsibility for the ship is ultimately the captain's.
The general manager of the ship operator, Capt. Aga Nagarajan, defended Capt. Sun's actions, and said it was extremely rare for a captain to overrule a pilot's decisions: "The pilot has to do something really crazy for a master (captain) to take over for a pilot."
"The pilot thought it was good to go," Nagarajan said when NTSB investigator Rob Jones pressed him on why the captain agreed to leave port when visibility was about one-eighth of a mile.
Proper procedures were followed, Nagarajan said, but conceded: "In hindsight, they could have discussed more, including the restricted visibility in the port."
Meanwhile, documents unsealed by a federal judge in San Francisco on Friday revealed that on the morning of the spill, the fog was so thick that at least three other pilots in San Francisco Bay decided not to sail until later in the day, after it had cleared.
During an interview Nov. 28 at the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco, Capt. Sun stated that the fog was so heavy he could not see the bow of his own ship.
"Both the pilot and (captain) had direct knowledge of the severity of the fog and decided to get under way nonetheless," according to an affidavit from Scott Adair, a special agent with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
In an interview, Capt. Patrick Moloney, executive director of the state Board of California Pilot Commissioners, said: "The master has ultimate responsibility. It's his ship. If he doesn't want to go they don't leave."
Of the 24-member Chinese crew, 18 have been allowed to return home, and five plus the captain are staying in a hotel in San Francisco, paid by their employer, at the request of federal prosecutors until May 31.
Radar working
The two radar systems on the Cosco Busan were functioning the morning of the accident, testified Mike Hughes, a field engineer for Sperry Marine, who examined the equipment.
Cota had questioned whether the radar systems were working properly. But according to the transcripts released Tuesday, he told the captain he was having trouble reading the electronic charts.
Cota's behavior, and the oversight of harbor pilots, will be the focus of the second day of hearings today. In a transcript of his interview with NTSB investigators on Nov. 16, Cota said he was taking Provigil, a type of prescription medication for sleep apnea. The NTSB and prosecutors are investigating whether that could have impaired his judgment.
In that same transcript, Cota described the reaction of the crew after the collision.
"The captain didn't jump up and down or try to strangle me or even come up and bad-mouth me or - he actually made no comments to me," Cota said. "I apologized to him, but no, nobody came up and said, you know, you're an idiot or what are you thinking here. No, they were - they had nothing to say, but like I say, I'm not real sure of their English proficiency."
Asked why he apologized, Cota added: "I don't think I was admitting guilt but the guy's ship had a big hole in it. I, you know, I kind of felt it was the decent thing to do."
Mercury News staff writer Paul Rogers contributed to this report. Frank Davies can be reached at fdavies@mercurynews.com or (202) 662-8921.