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Time-charter - Late payments of hire - Whether shipowners entitled to withdraw vessel

The vessel was chartered on the N.Y.P.E. form for a trip via port/s in/out geographical rotation to East Mediterranean. The estimated duration of the trip was about 50/60 days without guarantee. The vessel was delivered into the charter service on 8 April when the first hire instalment accordingly became due. That was not paid (in the sense that the owners did not receive it in the designated bank account) until 16 April. The second instalment of hire which was due on 23 April was never paid. Although the charterers said that they had made a remittance, and there was some evidence to support that, it never arrived in the owners’ bank account before the owners withdrew the ship from the charter service on 7 May.