Three abbreviations in a charter party can look like decorative legal text. They are not. SHEX, FHEX, and WWD are the calculator that converts time at port into money - and they decide who owes whom. Laytime is not counted by commercial instinct. It is counted by the contract.
Laytime is the time allowed under a charter party for loading or discharging. It is fixed in the contract: "72 hours," "five weather working days," "6,000 metric tons per day." When laytime expires, demurrage starts.
Weather working days count only those days on which weather conditions allow cargo work. A storm, heavy rain, or freezing temperatures that stop operations remove the day from laytime.
The subtlety is evidentiary. "Bad weather" must be proven on the record - port log, met office data, statement of facts. A general impression that it rained may sound persuasive in correspondence, but it rarely pays a demurrage bill in arbitration.
Under SHEX, Sundays and public holidays do not count against laytime. It works in ports that genuinely close on those days.
The definition of "holiday" matters. Local, national, religious? Some charters specify "SHEX local holidays only." Without specification, tribunals default to the official calendar of the port country.
FHEX is the regional counterpart of SHEX for ports where Friday is the rest day - Turkey, Iran, the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia. If the contract covers these regions, FHEX is the appropriate clause.
The two are not interchangeable. SHEX inserted into a charter for discharge at Bandar Abbas guarantees a dispute: the port did not work on Friday, the charterer treats Sunday as a holiday, and the charter says otherwise.
A full day is 24 hours. "Five weather working days SHEX of 24 consecutive hours" means five uninterrupted days, excluding Sundays, holidays, and weather stoppages.
A weather working day generally requires continuous workable conditions across the full working period. Several hours of work followed by a rain stoppage produces only a part day. A full day of stoppage produces zero.
Once on demurrage, always on demurrage.
Once laytime expires, SHEX, FHEX, and weather exceptions stop applying. Demurrage runs around the clock, weekend or holiday, until cargo work is complete.
First, no recorded NOR. Without a valid notice of readiness, the laytime clock has no starting point. In a dispute, the charterer cannot prove when time began running.
Second, no statement of facts. The statement is the day-by-day record: arrival, NOR, work start and stop, weather conditions, holidays. Without it, laytime is an estimate, not a calculation.
Third, unread exceptions. WWD without "of 24 consecutive hours" is read differently from WWD with the qualifier. SHEX and SHEX UU are not the same thing either. One tail after SHEX, FHEX, or WWD can decide whether the result is demurrage, dispatch, or a long exchange about what the parties "really meant."
SHEX, FHEX, and WWD are not decorative charter party language. They are instructions for how money is counted. Read them before cargo operations, because after the demurrage invoice arrives someone will read them anyway - just without you.
Related Telegram post: Oleg Kryukovskiy wrote about the same laytime problem for the Rational Grain channel.