WIBON: The Clause That Decides Who Pays for Port Congestion

A charter party usually says the vessel gives Notice of Readiness once she arrives at the load or discharge port and is ready in every respect. Laytime then starts after a fixed interval, often six or twelve hours. Simple enough when the berth is free.

It stops being simple when the port is congested and the vessel has to anchor outside instead of going straight alongside. English law has long accepted that a ship can be "arrived" for laytime purposes once she reaches the commercial area of the port and is at the charterer's disposal, even if she never touches the berth. That principle comes from decades of case law on arrived ship status, and it only helps the owner if the charter party actually says so.

This is where WIBON earns its place in the clause sheet. Whether In Berth Or Not means NOR is valid the moment the vessel reaches the port, anchorage included. Without it, and on a berth charter party, laytime waits for the vessel to get alongside. Every hour spent at anchor during congestion then falls on the owner, not the charterer.

We've seen this play out at a congested port: one side assumed WIBON was standard and never checked the fixture note, the other read the clause sheet line by line before agreeing terms. The gap between those two approaches, measured in laytime, ran into real money. It's the kind of clause that looks like boilerplate until the day it isn't, and it's one of the first things we check before any demurrage calculation starts.