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That view was consistent with “whether/ or alleged off hire …” (which was suspected to be a typo for “whether for alleged off hire …”), the word ‘alleged’ connoting a situation where the vessel was said to be off hire, but that might or might not ultimately be found to have been the case. That underlined the point that line 146 was designed to cater for situations where a dispute existed about whether the vessel was or was not off-hire, and to address the situation by requiring the hire to be paid, leaving the argument to be resolved later.
This conclusion was reinforced, as the tribunal pointed out, by there being good commercial reasons for such a clause to be inserted, to protect owners from losing critical hire income based on potentially spurious allegations that the vessel was off-hire. Conversely, charterers Charterers retained important remedies. Owners did not have an unfettered discretion when deciding whether or not to agree to an alleged off-hire, as they had to exercise that discretion rationally and for a contractually appropriate purpose (in other words, there had to be a genuine dispute about the deduction). Charterers also had a cross-claim for a debt for any overpaid hire which was not returned to them, for which they had the security of a lien on the vessel under clause 23 (fn.3).
As to the various other points of criticism made by Charterers, the judge did not consider there to be any ambiguity in the language used, as line 146 expressly qualified the off-hire provisions and reinforced the clause 11 payment obligation.