Preamble

Laytime calculation is a very important part of the freight balance settlement. The Shipowner and the Charterer do their laytime calculations and compare their final figures to come to the final despatch/demurrage settlement: despatch - if the vessel sailed sooner than expected or demurrage - if the vessel was too late to sail as preplanned. Moneywise, despatch is a premium paid by the Shipowner to the Charterer for saving ship's valuable time. While demurrage is a penalty paid by the Charterer to the Shipowner for delaying the vessel beyond the planning horizon. Usually, demurrage equals to the ship's daily revenue, while despatch is half of the demurrage. The Charterers are interested to complete handling the vessel as soon as practically possible to obtain despatch, while the Shipowners are not always keen on being on demurrage as they risk to lose the next valuable deal. The demurrage may be beneficial for the Shipowner when the freight market is becoming weak. Shipagent provides both the Shipowner and the Charterer with the Statement of Facts (SOF) containing the records of operations, timings of events, stoppages, shifts, weather observations (important for weather sensitive cargos) ... etc.

Example of fact may look like as follows:

Date	From	Till	Description
14/09/2010	08:30	15:10	Waiting for berth availability

Both parties decide on which events to count as laytime (and which not) by taking into account the clauses of the governing Charter Party.