Bulgaria’s Varna Radio navigational-warning broadcast, still carried on the official VTMIS weather-and-warning page on Thursday morning, prints NAVWARN 759/26 as a named surface-drone hit on a merchant hull southeast of Cape Kaliakra. The working primary is: BLACK SEA. BULGARIA. SOUTHEAST OF CAPE KALIAKRA. 281000 UTC OCT 2026 MV CONTSHIP JET IMO 9348625 HIT BY SURFACE DRONES IN 43-15 N 028-48 E. CREW ABANDONING SHIP MARINERS REQUESTED TO NAVIGATE WITH CAUTION. Industry coastal reprints carry the same text with minutes expanded as 43-15.00N 028-48.00E. That is the product. It names the ship, it names the IMO number, it names the weapon class as surface drones, it names a crew abandoning, and it asks mariners to navigate with caution. It does not print a keep-clear radius, a wreck buoy, a pollution line, a remaining-on-board count, or a port closure.
That is Wednesday’s dedicated casualty and caution file. It is not a rewrite of Friday’s dedicated Khoryv capsize, not a rewrite of Tuesday’s dedicated ARN 158/2026 wreck-move, and not a rewrite of Wednesday night’s dedicated UKMTO Advisory 184-26 in the Gulf of Aden. Masters who brief Thursday as a second Khoryv strike, as a Varna or Constanta harbour shutdown, or as Warning 185-26 will have merged a named Bulgarian containership hit into three other series.
What the warning actually printed
The hydrographic text is short and is the working primary. NAVWARN 759/26. Black Sea. Bulgaria. Southeast of Cape Kaliakra. Date-time group 281000 UTC 28 October 2026. Hull MV CONTSHIP JET. IMO 9348625. Hit by surface drones in 43-15N 028-48E. Crew abandoning ship. Mariners requested to navigate with caution. Stay with that wording. Do not invent a three-drone count on the NAVWARN. Do not invent a listing angle, a fire, a sinking time, or a salvage contract on this notice. Do not invent a five-cable or one-nautical-mile circle around 43-15N 028-48E. 759/26 does not print one.
The hydrographic wrap, not a second primary, is NAVWARN 761/26, still in force on the same Varna Radio board. BLACK SEA. BULGARIA. SOUTHEAST OF CAPE KALIAKRA ON 28 OCT 2026 AT 1200 UTC OVER 20 CONTAINERS CONTAINING FLAMMABLE GASES, NON-TOXIC NON-FLAMMABLE GASES, FLAMMABLE LIQUIDS AND OTHER DANGEROUS GOODS DRIFTING FROM MV CONTSHIP JET IMO 9348625 IN PSN 43-15.2 N 028-48.5 E DANGER TO NAVIGATION. MARINERS REQUESTED TO NAVIGATE WITH CAUTION. That is the first official public print that the hit threw cargo, that the cargo includes dangerous goods, and that the working container plot sits about four-tenths of a nautical mile east-northeast of the 759/26 hit. An earlier same-day notice, NAVWARN 760/26, printed numerous containers drifting from the same hull at 281200 UTC in 43-15.20N 028-48.50E, without the class list; industry coastal reprints mark 760/26 archived at 13:25 UTC and replaced by 761/26. Hold 761/26 as the working container instrument. Do not brief two separate spills.
The official ministry wrap, not a second hydrographic primary, is the Bulgarian Ministry of Transport and Communications statement dated 28 October 2026, headlined that the 18-member crew of the containership CONTSHIP JET has been saved. The ministry says the search-and-rescue action was coordinated among the Ministry of Transport and Communications (the Emergency Rescue Directorate of the Executive Agency Maritime Administration), the Ministry of Defence (Navy and Air Force) and the Ministry of Interior (Border Police). The signal that the Liberia-flagged containership had been hit by maritime drones about 17 nautical miles east of Cape Kaliakra was received at 12:01 local from the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in Constanta. The ship had been on a voyage from Haifa, Israel, to Constanta, Romania, carrying 421 containers according to the crew. At 12:13 local the crew left the vessel. Search and rescue was declared at once. Three Navy craft and one Border Police ship were sent to the area. At 12:53 local, eight seafarers were on board a Navy cutter and the remaining ten were in the ship’s lifeboat. The crew was saved and directed to Varna in a Navy ship, with Border Police and medical teams organised for reception. Transport minister Georgi Peev thanked the teams. That is a SAR-complete line on the 18. It is not a NAVWARN cancel. 759/26 and 761/26 remain the working cautions.
Agency colour of the same clock, held separately: the Associated Press quoted Defence Minister Dimitar Stoyanov that three maritime drones struck the Liberian-flagged Contship Jet a little before 1 p.m. local, about 21 nautical miles southeast of Shabla, near Cape Kaliakra. Regional and industry reprints add a 14-Filipino and four-Ukrainian split, name the Navy rescue ship Proteo and the frigate Reshitelni among the three Navy units, and place the 18 at Varna Marine Station during the evening of 28 October for medical checks, unharmed. Lloyd’s List colour of a heavily listing abandoned hull is industry analysis. None of those extras sit on 759/26. Hold the three-drone count, the 21-nautical-mile Shabla offset, the nationality split and the named Navy hulls as colour. Hold 17 nautical miles east of Kaliakra and the 12:01 / 12:13 / 12:53 local clocks as the ministry wrap. Hold 43-15N 028-48E and crew abandoning as the NAVWARN.
Open-register colour only, not a flag or class statement on the warning: IMO 9348625, Liberia, container ship, built 2007, about 160 metres, 14,016 gt, on the order of 18,100 dwt, about 1,267 TEU, gearless, class RINA. ISM manager Contships Management Inc.; registered-owner colour Sevilla Maritime Co. Call-sign colour D5UX8, MMSI colour 636019532. AIS colour of a Haifa departure and a ROCST destination is consistent with the ministry Haifa–Constanta line; treat late-evening AIS plots south of the hit as tracking colour, not as a NAVWARN status that the hull is under command.
What this is not
This is not a rewrite of M/V Khoryv. Friday’s dedicated Romanian Naval Authority file remains the Khoryv casualty and search piece: Comoros flag, crew of 13, nine recovered alive, one body recovered, three missing, 13 nautical miles abeam of Constanta. Tuesday’s dedicated ARN 158/2026 remains the last Romanian wreck-move at 43-49.50 N, 028-53.37 E. Thursday’s companion NAVWARN 766/26 is the working Bulgarian five-cable keep-clear on that hull east of Shabla. Contship Jet is a different ship, a different IMO, a different weapon class on the notice, and a different plot. 759/26 prints IMO 9348625. 766/26 prints IMO 8138712. Do not collapse them.
This is not Warning 185-26, and it is not a Gulf of Aden product. UKMTO still ends at Advisory 184-26. NAVAREA IX 416/26 remains Wednesday night’s wrap on that Pirate Action Group watch. This is not Update 109. Update 108, JMIC# 001 26, ICOD 251300 UTC 25 October, remains the last numbered public periodic note, Hormuz SEVERE, Arabian Gulf SUBSTANTIAL, 156 incidents since 1 March. This is not an International Maritime Organization 122-count. The highlighted-incidents board is still 121 confirmed / 24 seafarer fatalities as at 27 October, with Leonora Kosan still the newest named Middle East row. Contship Jet does not belong on that table. This is not a rewrite of Wine Trader, HS Dignity, Chelsea 3, MApN 213, the EP 432-52-88 / CSAT vote, or Tuesday’s NATO extra-MPA note.
This is not a Varna, Burgas, Constanta or Sulina closure. 759/26 and 761/26 request caution. They do not prohibit entry. Same-board NAVWARN 752/26 still warns of a Navy underwater survey inside seven cables of 43-15.86N 028-27.56E until 1000 UTC 30 October; that box sits well west of the hit and is not this hull. NAVWARN 754/26 is a Varna Bay diving box until 1110 UTC 29 October. Do not merge a harbour-training circle into a Kaliakra drone hit. 761/26 is a drifting dangerous-goods watch. It is not a shoreline-pollution confirmation and not a completed container recovery.
Operational implications
For a master shaping Constanta, Midia, Mangalia, Varna or Burgas this morning, Wednesday is two plots, not one. 759/26 puts an abandoned-or-unmanned containership hit at 43-15N 028-48E, on the order of 17 nautical miles east of Cape Kaliakra on the ministry offset. 761/26 puts more than 20 containers, including flammable gases, non-toxic non-flammable gases, flammable liquids and other dangerous goods, at 43-15.2N 028-48.5E from 1200 UTC 28 October. Containers of that class are low in the water, radar-poor, and a contact hazard in darkness and in a seaway. The NAVWARN still prints no radius. The working instruction is caution in the south-east Kaliakra approaches, a lookout for boxes as well as for the hull, and no assumption that the 18-saved ministry line cancelled the wreck or the cargo. A passage plan that only carried Tuesday’s Khoryv one-nautical-mile circle, or that treated the Bulgarian coast as quiet because the last dedicated Black Sea merchant file on this desk was ARN 158/2026, has not budgeted a second named hull and a dangerous-goods field on the Constanta track.
For a DPA and an operator with feeders or general cargo on Haifa–Constanta, Piraeus–Varna or any west-Black-Sea rotation this week, the reporting split is the operational content. The original distress reached Bulgarian authorities from MRCC Constanta. Further sightings of the hull, of containers, of pollution or of persons in the water belong with the coastal-state MRCC and with the company security officer, not with a UKMTO 185-26 that does not exist. 759/26 does not order an armed team, a daylight-only transit, or a deviation around a published circle. It also does not authorise a master to treat the three-drone agency line as a NAVWARN fact. Log the warning number, the 281000 UTC clock, the IMO, the 43-15N 028-48E plot, the 761/26 container plot and class list, and the ministry 18-saved / 12:13 local abandon clocks. Do not log a harbour closure that the notice does not print.
For charterers and P&I, Wednesday is a named Black Sea containership casualty with a dangerous-goods cargo watch, not a Hormuz fixture problem and not a Khoryv rewrite. Off-hire, deviation and general-average conversations will now ask whether the ship was in the south-east Kaliakra approaches after 1000 UTC 28 October, whether it logged containers, and whether the 421-container / 18-crew ministry figures were in the master’s pack. They will not be answered by Advisory 184-26, by JMIC 016-26, or by Tuesday’s 121-count. The Haifa origin is a commercial fact on the ministry statement; it is not a finding that the hit was directed at that load. Do not convert a surface-drone NAVWARN into an attribution that 759/26 does not print.
Keep the dedicated files on their own lines. Khoryv remains Friday’s ANR casualty file, Saturday’s ARN 152/2026 first public lat-long, Sunday’s 155/2026, Tuesday’s 158/2026, and Thursday’s companion 766/26. Wine Trader remains the dedicated Sulina fire-at-anchor file. 184-26 remains Wednesday night’s Gulf of Aden Advisory. Update 108 remains the last periodic Middle East threat note. 016-26 remains Wednesday afternoon’s blockade document pack. Do not recast 29 October morning as Warning 185-26, as an IMO 122-count, as a Varna closure, or as a completed Contship Jet salvage.
What Operators Should Note
- Log 759/26 as a named surface-drone hit, not as a Khoryv rewrite. NAVWARN 759/26, 281000 UTC 28 October. Black Sea, Bulgaria, southeast of Cape Kaliakra. MV CONTSHIP JET, IMO 9348625, hit by surface drones in 43-15N 028-48E. Crew abandoning ship. Mariners requested to navigate with caution. No radius, no wreck buoy, no pollution line, no port closure on this notice. This is not 766/26, not ARN 158/2026, not 184-26, and not Warning 185-26.
- Plot 761/26 as the working cargo watch, not as a second spill. NAVWARN 761/26, 1200 UTC 28 October. Over 20 containers containing flammable gases, non-toxic non-flammable gases, flammable liquids and other dangerous goods drifting from Contship Jet at 43-15.2N 028-48.5E. Danger to navigation. Caution. 760/26 was the same-day precursor without the class list and is no longer the instrument. Do not invent a recovery complete.
- Hold the ministry 18-saved clocks separately from the NAVWARN. MTC 28 October: signal 12:01 local from MRCC Constanta; Liberia flag; about 17 nautical miles east of Cape Kaliakra; Haifa to Constanta; 421 containers per the crew; crew left at 12:13 local; three Navy craft and one Border Police ship; eight seafarers on a Navy cutter and ten in the ship’s lifeboat at 12:53 local; crew saved and directed to Varna. That closes the 18. It does not cancel 759/26 or 761/26.
- Hold the three-drone / Shabla / nationality extras as colour. AP / Stoyanov three maritime drones and about 21 nautical miles southeast of Shabla, the 14-Filipino and four-Ukrainian split, Proteo / Reshitelni naming, and Lloyd’s List listing colour are not on 759/26. Open-register colour only: Liberia, 2007, about 160 m, 14,016 gt, Contships Management. Do not promote any of that to a NAVWARN fact.
- Do not merge this hull onto Khoryv, Wine Trader or the Gulf of Aden. Friday’s ANR Khoryv file, Tuesday’s ARN 158/2026 and Thursday’s 766/26 remain that wreck. Wine Trader remains the dedicated Sulina fire. UKMTO still ends at 184-26. Update 108 remains last periodic note. IMO still 121 / 24 as at 27 October. 016-26 remains the blockade document pack. 752/26 is a separate Kaliakra survey box, not this ship.
- Brief caution on the Constanta and Varna approaches, not a harbour shutdown. 759/26 and 761/26 request caution. They do not close Varna, Burgas, Constanta, Midia, Mangalia or Sulina. Watch a later NAVWARN that marks a wreck buoy, a keep-clear radius, a pollution line or a salvage; a later ministry note that moves the 18 or the 421; or a flag/class statement. Do not brief Wednesday as a completed hull recovery.
Regulas Shipping will keep lining NAVWARN 759/26 against 761/26 so operators can treat Wednesday’s product as a named Kaliakra surface-drone hit with a dangerous-goods container watch, not as a Khoryv rewrite, a harbour closure, or a completed salvage.
