BIMCO Hull Fouling Clause

The BIMCO Hull Fouling Clause for Time Charter Parties, published in 2013 and revised in 2019, allocates the consequences of fouling accumulated while a vessel is idle on the charterer’s orders. It works by suspending the speed and consumption warranties once an aggregated idle period is exceeded, 15 days by default, pending inspection and any cleaning.

Suspension rather than adjustment is the deliberate design choice, because separating the fouling component of underperformance from every other cause is an arithmetic problem no clause can solve. The full article will set out the clause subclause by subclause, the aggregation mechanism, who pays for inspection and cleaning and where, the interaction with NYPE 2015 clause 30, and the English default the clause is contracting out of.