Bulgarian coastal radio issued NAVWARN 706/26 for the western Black Sea on Friday, 9 October. The notice, as carried on the coastal board, is short: at 0700 UTC, at 42-54.83N 029-04.15E, east of Cape Sveti Atanas, merchant vessel MV ABLE, IMO 9001136, following a drone attack and fire on board, was drifting without crew. All ships were told to navigate with increased caution and to keep a safety distance. The same day, Navy Commander Rear Admiral Kiril Mihaylov spoke after a boarding from the frigate Verni and a Cougar helicopter. He said no one could say whether Able would sink. There was a hole in the stern. The ship had taken on water. It was stable for the moment. There was no spill. The navy was monitoring. BNT’s 1528 local briefing and Fakti’s afternoon write-through are the working primaries for the inspection. BurgasMedia’s same-afternoon file adds the local military colour that the hull sat about 55 miles from Cape Emine.
That is a new coastal-state wreck and navigation product, not a rewrite of Tuesday’s dedicated Radev / BTA rescue notice on the two-ship attack east of Byala. The useful facts for a DPA, a Black Sea master and a P&I desk are the published position, the unmanned-and-on-fire line, the stern breach and flooded-engine-room colour from the defence minister, the “no spill” line, the empty SAR on Alfa Watan, and the fact that Sofia still has not attributed the 6 October drones to a named state. Do not treat a NAVWARN as a closed salvage contract. Do not invent a new crew count for the ship that sank.
What Sofia published on Friday, and what the boarding found
NAVWARN 706/26 is the instrument that other traffic has to plot. Cape Sveti Atanas sits on the Byala coast. The printed position is well east of that cape, inside the exclusive economic zone where Prime Minister Rumen Radev placed Tuesday’s two-ship attack, about 70 nautical miles east of Byala. Mihaylov, after the inspection, gave a different working range: about 40 nautical miles off the Bulgarian coast. BurgasMedia, quoting the military the same afternoon, said Able was about 55 miles from Cape Emine. Hold all three published figures. Do not average them into a homemade latitude. The NAVWARN coordinate is the one that goes on the passage plan. The navy ranges are inspection colour.
The boarding was a 24th Air Base, Krumovo, job. Lieutenant Colonel Plamen Donchev, deputy commander of the base, told BNT the mission was to put two service personnel on the ship for a detailed examination. Senior Sergeant Ivan Katsarov, a senior paratrooper and rescuer, said they were sent to look for drone debris, collect fragments and photograph them, and found none: everything had burned. They went inside. Everything was burned out. They checked the cargo. It was wheat. Search-and-rescue specialist Velislav Yarukov said the team had recordings of the whole inspection, that the fire had caused extensive damage, and that the crew had used the emergency and rescue equipment on board to leave. The inspection lasted more than 30 minutes. Fakti said the two servicemen boarded after an operation with Verni and the Cougar and that the interior was badly burned.
Defence Minister Dimitar Stoyanov, speaking the same day, said no drone fragments had been identified that could establish origin. From the helicopter, he said, it could be seen that the vessel had been hit by a surface drone and that the engine room was completely flooded. He refused to accuse either Russia or Ukraine. The drone could have been Ukrainian or Russian. Talking in hypotheses, he said, was not correct when national security was at stake. Hold that as a political and visual-colour line from the minister after a helicopter pass, not as a completed forensic finding and not as a named-attacker circular. Tuesday’s dedicated file already recorded Radev’s later “clearly either Russian or Ukrainian” remark as political colour. Friday does not convert that remark into attribution. It adds a surface-drone description and a flooded-engine-room line from the same minister.
How this sits on Tuesday’s two-ship file
Tuesday, 6 October, remains the casualty primary. Radev, as carried by BTA: two merchant ships attacked by sea and aerial drones at about 03:00 in Bulgaria’s EEZ, about 70 nautical miles east of Byala. Togo-flag Alfa Watan, IMO 7510884, took critical structural damage and sank; its crew was missing and no official headcount was published. Palau-flag Able, IMO 9001136, caught fire; all 18 people left, 11 Turkish and 7 Indian, two injured, and were taken off by Bulgarian units after the Ro-Ro/passenger ferry Dioscuria, IMO 7931997, had already found an overturned boat, three overturned rafts and life jackets with no people at the first site. Radev’s cargo line on Able was wheat, southbound. That file does not move.
Friday adds the wreck picture that Tuesday did not have. Able is no longer only “on fire, crew off.” It is an unmanned dry ship with a published NAVWARN position, a stern hole, water in, a burned-out interior, wheat still in the holds, no visible spill, and an open question as to whether it will founder. Alfa Watan’s human file has closed the wrong way. Mihaylov said the navy had found the remains of the sunken ship but not the sailors. Rumen Nikolov, director of emergency and rescue activities at the Executive Agency Maritime Administration, had already said on Wednesday that no crew members from the sunken ship had been found and that the search-and-rescue operation had been called off. Do not reopen a live SAR on Alfa Watan unless MRCC Varna or the owner publishes a new finding. Do not invent the missing headcount to fill the gap.
Open-register particulars do not change. Able remains IMO 9001136, MMSI 511100568, call sign T8A3731, Palau, 1991, about 110–115 by 16.5–17 metres, matching owner Ocean Eagle of Istanbul, wheat, southbound toward an Istanbul ETA that has now passed. Alfa Watan remains IMO 7510884, MMSI 671480000, 5VCS7, Togo, 1976, about 83–84 by 12 metres, about 3,160 dwt, matching owner Baraka Shipping, matching destination Sulina. “Turkish-owned” is still commercial colour. Friday’s boarding is not a Palau or Togo circular.
What Friday is not
Friday is not a new two-ship attack. It is not a rewrite of Monday’s dedicated Romanian Naval Authority casualty on Royad Mammadov, IMO 9356969, in the Romanian EEZ. It is not a rewrite of Saturday 4 October’s dedicated Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority Liberia-flag port strike, local match Jincheng, IMO 9378838. It is not a rewrite of Tuesday’s dedicated Odesa-region Marshall Islands rapeseed-oil fire. One notice per authority. A NAVWARN on Able does not identify those hulls.
The Joint War Committee’s JWLA-035 circular of 16 September already lists almost the entire Black Sea as a war-risk area, excluding territorial waters of adjoining countries other than Russia and Ukraine. An unmanned burning dry ship at a published EEZ coordinate does not create that listing. It is evidence, three days later, that the abandoned wheat ship is still a collision, pollution-watch and wreck-removal problem west of the Danube mouth. Keep Friday off the Hormuz desk. UKMTO Warnings 150-26 through 160-26 do not identify Able. The IRGC’s Friday NV Sunshine product is a Gulf gas-carrier claim. It does not speak to the Bulgarian EEZ.
The Ministry of Defence said on Friday that Verni had again headed toward the attack area. The navy also said it had destroyed a drone about 15 nautical miles east of Sinemorets the same day. Origin of that device was not published. Do not fold a Sinemorets shoot-down into the Able boarding as a second named merchant casualty. It is a separate navy action on the same date.
Operational implications
An unmanned dry ship, on fire or recently burned, with a stern breach and a flooded engine room, at a published coordinate about 40 to 70 nautical miles off the Bulgarian coast, is a navigation warning before it is a salvage debate. Masters still bound between the Bosphorus, Varna, Burgas, Cape Emine, Cape Sveti Atanas, Sulina and the Danube mouth need 42-54.83N 029-04.15E on the chart, a safety distance, and a lookout for a drifting, possibly AIS-weak hull that may founder without further notice. Mihaylov’s “no one can say whether it will sink” is the night-order line. The “no spill” sentence is a snapshot after a boarding, not a completed MARPOL survey on a wheat ship that has taken water aft.
Managers who recognise IMO 9001136 should assume flag, class, P&I, the Bulgarian investigator and the cargo interest will now ask for the abandon-ship record, the last cargo documents, whether a distress message named a surface craft, AIS and VDR, and a wreck-position / pollution watch that uses the NAVWARN coordinate rather than Tuesday’s “east of Byala” range. The 18 people are already ashore. Friday is about the hull, the wheat, the hole in the stern and the traffic that has to miss it. Charterers who treated the Bulgarian EEZ as the safe western-basin stem after the 18 were lifted should not. JWLA-035 already priced the basin. Friday puts a live drifting wreck on that map with a latitude and longitude.
Dioscuria’s Tuesday rescue and Friday’s military boarding are a reminder that the first people onto these hulls are still other seafarers and then a two-man navy team in a burned interior. That is a BMP and ISM problem for every other dry ship in the western basin, not only for Able. Do not brief the file as closed because the fire party has left and the SAR on Alfa Watan has been stood down. The wreck, the missing Togo-flag crew count, the origin of the drones and the pollution state after a possible foundering were not closed on Friday afternoon.
What Operators Should Note
- Plot NAVWARN 706/26, not only Tuesday’s Byala range. 0700 UTC 9 October, 42-54.83N 029-04.15E, east of Cape Sveti Atanas, MV ABLE IMO 9001136, drone attack and fire, drifting without crew, increased caution, keep a safety distance. Mihaylov: about 40 nautical miles off the coast. BurgasMedia: about 55 miles from Cape Emine. Use the printed coordinate on the passage plan. Do not average the ranges.
- Treat the hull as a live wreck, not as a completed salvage. Stern hole, water in, engine room flooded in the minister’s helicopter description, interior burned out, wheat still on board, stable for now, unknown whether it will sink, no spill at the time of the boarding. That is a collision and pollution-watch problem for the next ship through. It is not a closed class survey.
- Do not reopen Alfa Watan as a live SAR unless Varna does. Navy found the wreck remains, not the people. Nikolov on Wednesday: no crew found, search-and-rescue called off. Still no official headcount. Tuesday’s dedicated file remains the casualty primary: Alfa Watan IMO 7510884 sunk, Able’s 18 off. Friday does not invent the missing number.
- Keep the boarding’s empty forensics in the claim file. Krumovo two-man team, more than 30 minutes, no drone debris, everything burned, cargo wheat, crew left by the ship’s own survival craft. Stoyanov: surface drone from the helicopter, engine room flooded, no attribution to Russia or Ukraine. Do not put a named state on the first notice to underwriters from a minister’s refusal to speculate.
- Do not merge Friday with Royad Mammadov, the Odesa port strike, or the Marshall Islands rapeseed-oil fire. Those remain Monday, Saturday 4 October and Tuesday Odesa files under other authorities. Friday is Bulgaria, one IMO, one NAVWARN, one boarded wheat ship. One notice per authority.
- Keep this off the Hormuz and listed-area desks. It is not a new Joint War Committee circular, not UKMTO 150-26 through 160-26, and not a published MARPOL finding. CSO, DPA, Palau, the cargo interest and Black Sea war-risk own the wreck until Sofia, the flag or class publish a salvage decision, a foundering, or a pollution volume.
Regulas Shipping will keep lining NAVWARN 706/26 and Friday’s Verni / Krumovo boarding against Tuesday’s Radev notice on Alfa Watan 7510884 and Able 9001136 so operators can treat the unmanned wheat ship as a published western-Black Sea wreck and traffic hazard, not as a closed salvage or a reason to assume the Bulgarian exclusive economic zone has gone quiet.
