Fitburg crew denied dragging anchor as cables were damaged

Yle reports that the crew of the cargo ship Fitburg initially denied that its anchor was dragging, even as it damaged cables in the Gulf of Finland on New Year’s Eve 2025. Details emerged in investigation material released by Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation.

The material includes Finnish translations of recordings of conversations among the Fitburg crew. When Finnish maritime authorities received information about possible cable damage, they noticed that the chain of the ship’s starboard bow anchor was in the water.

The Finnish maritime authorities first contacted the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines-flagged Fitburg at about 6.15am.

“Fitburg, good morning, this is the Finnish maritime authority. Check your anchors immediately. Are you dragging something?” an official asked.

“OK, understood, sir. I’ll check now. Good morning,” the ship’s chief officer replied.

He soon returned to the call.

“Good morning again, sir. Yes, I have already checked all my anchors. They are on the ship and in good condition.”

“Sorry, did I hear correctly? Did you say your anchors are up?” the maritime official asked.

“Yes, my anchors are on the ship and in good condition. Everything is OK,” the chief officer replied.

In reality, the situation was not under control. Just over an hour later, the Finnish maritime authorities raised the issue again in a more forceful tone.

“You have an anchor in the water, so raise it immediately. Do you understand?”

“We are supposedly dragging an anchor”

At that point, the seriousness of the situation appeared to become clear to the Fitburg crew.

Conversations following the contact with the Finnish maritime authorities were recorded by the ship’s voyage data recorder. The crew members were not identified in detail in the investigation material, but a boatswain later told investigators that the voices belonged to him, the captain, the chief officer and the chief engineer.

Yle adjusted the wording of some transcripts to make them easier to understand.

“The starboard anchor is supposedly in the water … We are supposedly dragging an anchor,” one crew member said.

“What the hell?” another replied.

Someone soon referred to the cable damage involving the Eagle S oil tanker on Christmas Day 2024.

“This is their damn thing, remember? It was in the news a while ago … When they started claiming that a Russian vessel had damaged some of their cables, and later it was proven that nobody had done anything …”

During the conversation, one crew member said it would be better to record on a mobile phone that everything was in order on the ship. Soon afterwards, a crew member, apparently the boatswain based on the conversation, went to check the anchors.

“The port anchor is in place and I can’t see the starboard anchor. I can’t see it here because of the ice,” he said.

“The chain, the chain! Is it secured? Has the anchor chain gone out?” someone asked.

“No, it isn’t secured,” the boatswain replied.

Someone then instructed him to take a photograph.

“Take a picture, take a picture, take a picture!”

Police later concluded from videos that the windlass and chain stopper for Fitburg’s starboard bow anchor were completely frozen and could not have been used within a short period.

Captain Andrei Maksimenko commented on the events in Russian for Yle as the trial began on September 8.

“God help us”

As the crew investigated the situation and discussed it, some members appeared to realise that the anchor had been dragging along the seabed.

“It would be unfortunate if there was something there.”

“There can’t be anything there,” another crew member replied.

The moment when the crew confirmed what had happened was recorded in the investigation documents.

“Can you look in the chain locker and see how much chain is there? You roughly know how much there should be when the anchor is fully raised.”

“I think about three or four metres are in the water.”

“Oh, fuck!”

The records show that the crew found it difficult to believe that the anchor was dragging because, in their view, the ship’s speed had not changed.

“Good grief. I just couldn’t understand when he said that you were dragging an anchor. I asked how, because I couldn’t understand how we could be dragging an anchor when the speed is nine knots. The depth is 50 metres and so on. You are dragging, damn it.”

“Yes, it is hanging there, and record everything. God help us that we haven’t caught something. Then it really is … Good grief. Now we just need to establish whether it was two or three metres. Heh.”

The Finnish Border Guard eventually instructed Fitburg to stop, turn north and proceed to an anchorage that would be assigned to it. Authorities took control of the ship at about 11am.

The trail left on the seabed was about 130 kilometres long.