The manager carries no designation. Every ship in its network does.

Part 2 left two threads open: whether the six companies behind DENVER, MIMOZA, MAGNOLIYA, and CETUS manage tonnage beyond those four hulls, and whether this network's port-state outcomes differ from an unrelated tanker cohort calling the same ports. Neither is resolved here. The background-rate comparison is still in progress — the candidate cohort exists but has not been screened against this network's own company list, and nothing from it appears below. Ocean Solutions LLC's own MELISSA and KOLOSS are likewise still unexamined. Both remain open for a fourth piece.

What this piece covers instead came from a different direction: a Mumbai company already named in Part 2, and a third St Petersburg manager it turned out to lead to — and a finding that only showed up once every hull in that manager's fleet was checked by its permanent IMO number rather than the name it currently sails under.

A short video walks through the reconstruction. Part 1: The Successor Fleet. Part 2: The Wider Network.

North Vector' LLC, one office suite from Ocean Solutions LLC

A Daily News Egypt article published 24 June 2026, reporting on Charai Sea Shipping Pvt Ltd's fleet after what it described as the dismantling of Gatik Ship Management, listed an associated fleet of vessels beyond the seven already examined in Part 2. Cross-checking that list against Equasis identified a third St Petersburg end-owner not previously named in this network: North Vector' LLC.

North Vector' LLC's registered address — Office 33-N, Liter A, ul Marata, 69-71, St Petersburg, 191119, Russia — is the same building as Ocean Solutions LLC, the second St Petersburg manager Part 1 and Part 2 already name: Office 39-N, same street, same number, same postal code. Its own Equasis fleet page lists eight vessels: VAGA, PINEGA, SOYANA, VYCHEGDA, MEZEN, BELOMOR, BARENTS, and ONEGA. Three of the eight — PINEGA, SOYANA, and MEZEN — were already on the Daily News Egypt list; the other five surfaced only once North Vector' LLC's own company page was pulled directly. The same list also named three further hulls under other managers, not North Vector' LLC's own fleet: CHONGCHON, SOFIA K, and SARD.

North Vector' LLC itself carries no designation from the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, or the United Nations, checked by company name against our own local sanctions index. That check has a real limit, addressed directly below: a name-based check only catches a designation filed under the exact name being searched, and this network's own ships do not keep one name for long.

VAGA's own record makes that point on its own. The hull has carried six names: Antares from 2006, Amphitrite from 2009, Mystras from 2023, Himalaya from 2024, Runa from 2025, and VAGA since 1 July 2026 — the same day North Vector' LLC took over as registered owner, ISM manager, and commercial manager together. Its flag changed nine times over the same period, twice into designations Equasis's own record marks as unreliable: "Not Known" from May 2025 and, three months later, "Benin False" — a flag claim the record itself does not treat as genuine.

Ownership tells two distinct stories divided by a sharp break. From 2006 to February 2023 — seventeen years — VAGA sat with Tsakos Shipping & Trading SA and its affiliated companies (Tsakos Columbia Shipmanagement, Columbia Shipmanagement), a long-established, mainstream Greek tanker operator with no connection to this network — the same "ordinary commercial tonnage before the cascade" category Part 1 and Part 2 already established for LAVANDA, MIMOZA, and DENVER's own pre-shell histories. Then, over the next three and a half years, the vessel passed through eight further companies in rapid succession — Tsui Shipping & Marine, Orion Ship Management, Elmenteita Shipping Inc, Fujin Shipping & Marine, Vembanad Shipping Pvt Ltd, Shompen Shipping Ltd, and Tuluvai Shipping Pvt Ltd — before reaching North Vector' LLC. None of these eight is Bravo Ship Management or Maritas Fleet Pvt Ltd, the two companies Part 1 identified as the common staging ground for GLOBAL SEAWAY LLC's original seven hulls. This is the same shape — a long mainstream period, then a fast multi-company handoff sequence landing on an undesignated manager — recurring through an entirely separate set of company names, on a hull no other section of this investigation has touched.

One of the eight recurs elsewhere in this piece. Vembanad Shipping Pvt Ltd became VAGA's ISM manager on 18 April 2025 — one day before it took the same role on BELOMOR, another of North Vector' LLC's eight hulls, on 19 April 2025. Two vessels, the same intermediate manager, a day apart, both later arriving at North Vector' LLC.

VAGA's own name history also independently corroborates the designation finding below, from a completely different source than the one that produced it: the EU lists this hull as "Himalaya" — the exact name Equasis's own record shows VAGA carrying from November 2024, months before the July 2025 designation date.

Every hull carries a designation the manager doesn't

Checking each of the eleven hulls surfaced by this piece — North Vector' LLC's own eight, plus CHONGCHON, SOFIA K, and SARD — against European Union sanctions designations, matched by IMO number rather than by the name currently painted on the hull, returns a designation for every one of them:

Eleven of eleven. Four — BELOMOR, ONEGA, CHONGCHON, and SOFIA K — are listed under the exact name they carry today. The other seven — including SOYANA, listed as "Tyagaraja," and VYCHEGDA, listed as "Sandhya" — were designated under a name each vessel has since dropped. That distinction matters to anyone screening these ships operationally, not just to how this piece was researched: a charterer, port agent, or bunker supplier running a routine sanctions check against "SOYANA" today gets a clean result. The designation is real; it simply isn't filed under the name the ship currently uses. VAGA carries a second, independently-sourced designation: the United Kingdom listed it on 9 May 2025 as "HIMALAYA (ex-RUNA)," a record we hold separately from the EU list and had already hand-verified before this piece.

This check covers the European Union specifically, cross-referenced by IMO number against our own dataset, current as of a snapshot taken in late June 2026 — a designation made after that date would not appear here, though nothing already listed can un-list itself by the calendar moving forward. It does not represent an exhaustive check of every other authority (the United States, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, and others each maintain their own separate lists) for all eleven hulls; only VAGA's UK listing has been independently hand-verified here. Two of the eleven — SOYANA and VYCHEGDA — additionally carry citations to Swiss, UK, Canadian, Australian, Ukrainian, and New Zealand designations, sourced from those vessels' own OpenSanctions designation rationale rather than independently re-verified against each authority's own list directly; they are stated as sourced, not independently confirmed the way the EU dates above are.

North Vector' LLC, the company actually managing eight of these eleven hulls today, appears on none of these lists under any name checked.

Two detentions inside two different managers' tenure

Two of North Vector' LLC's eight vessels — both already shown above to carry their own EU designation, under names they no longer use — carry a detention on their own port-state record too, both under managers that predate North Vector' LLC itself.

VYCHEGDA was detained at Tuapse on 19 May 2023, under Black Sea MoU, with twelve deficiencies. The grounds cited were the International Ship Security Certificate, the Minimum Safe Manning Document, the Safety Management Certificate under the ISM Code, and the vessel's Tonnage Certificate. At that date, VYCHEGDA's ISM manager of record was Gatik Ship Management M/S, in place since 7 November 2022 — the same company named in the Daily News Egypt article's own framing of this cluster, and the company whose "dismantling" the article reports as the reason Charai Sea Shipping's fleet took shape.

SOYANA was detained at Tuapse on 22 June 2023, forty-three days into ARK Seakonnect Shipmanagement's tenure as ISM manager — the same company Part 2 already names as taking over PASSAT, one of Charai Sea Shipping's own seven hulls, in July 2023.

That makes three detentions now confirmed across this network's hulls under a Gatik-linked or Gatik-adjacent manager's own tenure, not before or after it: MAVERICK, already published in Part 2, under Lumen Ship Management FZCO; and these two, under Gatik Ship Management M/S and ARK Seakonnect Shipmanagement directly.

An independent government log, and what our own tracking now confirms

A document built for an earlier, unrelated case file — a reconstruction of the tanker SKIRON (IMO 9247443) — holds a ship-to-ship counterparty log sourced from Ukraine's own war-sanctions designation rationale, not from anything this network's own tracking produced. Checking that log against North Vector' LLC's and Charai Sea Shipping's fleets found five vessels, across the two fleets, that appear in it as logged counterparties: TENDUA, VYCHEGDA, SOYANA, SARD, and SOFIA K.

Re-running our own STS reconstruction against SKIRON's tracked position history — 10,146 fixes — against the current corpus confirms all five independently, at the same standard already used for the rest of this log: each hull's own AIS reporting placing it within 0.02 nautical miles of the hub, a separation distance that means two distinct transponders reporting essentially the same point, not merely operating in the same general area.

TENDUA, one of Charai Sea Shipping's own seven hulls, already published in Part 2, appears in the government log arriving from Tuapse in December 2024, tagged as Gatik-affiliated. Our own tracking places it alongside the hub on 17 December 2024, a separation of 0.01 nautical miles — a date-exact match.

SARD does the same. The government log dates this counterparty's transfer to 29 August 2024. Our own tracking shows SARD alongside the hub that same day, 0.01 nautical miles apart, with further fixes at comparable separation into the following day — the same pattern of a multi-hour alongside period the rest of this log's confirmed events already show.

SOFIA K's entry in the government log carries no single date, only a window — September through November 2024. Our own tracking does not give a single date to match either, because the log itself provides none, but it gives something arguably stronger: five separate alongside encounters with the hub, each at 0.01 nautical miles, spread across 4 September, 17 September (twice), 11 October, and 19 October 2024 — repeated contact squarely inside the log's own claimed window, not a single coincidental pass.

VYCHEGDA's entry carries the same kind of window — September and December 2024 — rather than a single date. Once its own position history was independently backfilled and checked, it shows the same pattern as SOFIA K: five alongside encounters with the hub at 0.01 nautical miles, clustered on 12 and 13 September 2024 — squarely inside the log's claimed September window.

Correction, 12 August 2026: SOYANA, the fifth counterparty, now confirms too. This piece originally stated SOYANA as an open coverage gap — its known MMSI carried zero positions in our corpus, and a targeted backfill attempt under that same MMSI returned nothing, consistent with an earlier finding that its 2024-era AIS history might sit under a different, historical MMSI. That MMSI has since been identified and backfilled directly. SOYANA now confirms against the same standard as the rest of this log, and more precisely than most of it: the government log gives this counterparty two specific dates, 3 and 29 November 2024. Our own tracking places SOYANA alongside the hub on both — 3 November at 0.01–0.03 nautical miles across three separate fixes, 29 November at 0.01–0.03 nautical miles across two more — a date-exact match on both of the log's own stated dates, the same grade as TENDUA's and SARD's confirmations above.

All five, then, sit at the same evidentiary grade as this piece's other AIS-based findings: our own tracking, independently reconstructed, agreeing with an outside government record on where and roughly when. None remain open.

Six vessels, two class-society withdrawals, two identical days

Equasis records each vessel's classification history — which society holds class, and when that changed. Reading that history across this network's now-31 tracked hulls surfaced two clusters that recur nowhere else in the corpus: three vessels each, withdrawing the same class society on the same calendar day.

On 26 June 2025, SARD, SOYANA, and MEZEN each withdrew class from the Indian Register of Shipping. On 18 July 2025, PASSAT, TENDUA, and VYCHEGDA did the same. Six vessels, spread across three different managers of record at the time, none of them the same hull twice, withdrawing an IACS-member class on the identical day as two others — twice, three weeks apart.

This is a dated, structural fact drawn from a classification society's own filed status change, not from anything this network's own AIS tracking produced, and it is independently checkable by anyone with Equasis access. It does not, on its own, establish why three unrelated-looking hulls filed the same withdrawal on the same day. A coordinated fleet-wide reclassification and three unrelated coincidences are both consistent with the raw fact as stated; this piece states the fact and does not resolve which explanation is correct.

One already-designated hull, one non-IACS classification society

MANASLU, the hull the European Union and Switzerland designated among the seven examined in Part 1, currently holds class from Alfa Register of Shipping, a Piraeus-registered society that is not a member of the International Association of Classification Societies. ETHERA, a separate hull in this corpus, currently holds class from the same society. Equasis's own company-name search does not return Alfa Register of Shipping, because that search covers ship-management companies, not classification societies — a different category of entity, and its absence from that particular lookup is not evidence the society itself is not real. It is a real, operating classification society with no IACS membership, and MANASLU — a hull already under formal EU and Swiss designation — currently sits under its class.

Evidence and confidence

What would prove this wrong

• The 11/11 EU designation finding rests on an IMO-anchored match against our own dataset, itself sourced from the EU's own published listings — but that dataset is a snapshot taken in late June 2026. Anything the EU listed after that date would not appear here, and this piece was not re-checked against a live EU feed before publication. A designation already present in the snapshot cannot un-happen, but the snapshot's completeness for anything more recent is not claimed.
• Only the EU list and, for VAGA, the UK list were independently checked against our own IMO-keyed dataset. The additional US, Swiss, Canadian, Australian, Ukrainian, and New Zealand designations cited for SOYANA and VYCHEGDA come from those vessels' own OpenSanctions rationale text, not from a separate re-verification against each authority's own published list — they are sourced, not independently re-confirmed the way the EU dates are, and this piece is explicit about that distinction rather than presenting all of it as equally checked.
• The North Vector'/Ocean Solutions building match could be a coincidence of a shared registered-agent address, common in St Petersburg company registrations, rather than evidence the two companies are connected. This piece does not claim common ownership or control, only a matching registered address.
• VYCHEGDA and SOYANA's detentions happened under their managers' own tenure, which is a stronger timing fact than a detention landing before or after a handoff — but a single detention per vessel is not, on its own, a rate finding. No claim is made here about whether these managers' fleets detain more often than an unrelated cohort; that comparison is the same unresolved background-rate work carried over from Part 2.
• Resolved, 12 August 2026 — no longer a hedge: this bullet originally read that SOYANA, one of the five GUR-log hulls, was not independently verified against our own tracking. Its historical MMSI has since been identified and backfilled; SOYANA now confirms on both of the log's own stated dates (3 and 29 November 2024), the same grade as this piece's other confirmations. Kept here, struck through in substance rather than deleted, for the same reason Part 2's own corrections stayed visible rather than being silently smoothed into the original text.
• The two same-day classification withdrawals are a real, checkable fact, but this piece does not claim to know why they happened on the same day. A coordinated fleet action and an unrelated coincidence both fit the fact as stated.

Method

Sources for this piece: the vessels' own registry and classification history as recorded through Equasis, port-state control inspection records from the individual flag and port-state authorities, Ukraine's own war-sanctions designation rationale for IMO 9412177 (a separate case file's calibration document, used here strictly as external corroboration and not as a claim of our own), the local OFAC/EU/UN sanctions index maintained for this corpus, and an IMO-keyed EU designation dataset assembled from OpenSanctions' bulk export of EU listings, snapshotted late June 2026 — an aggregator's export of the EU's own designations, not a direct pull from the EU's own publication, a distinction stated here because this dataset carries this piece's central claim.

Designations above are matched by IMO number — the standard identifier for tracking a hull across a name change, not a technique specific to this piece. It is worth naming as a limit on any check that isn't done this way: a sanctions screen keyed to a vessel's current name will not find a designation filed against a name that vessel no longer uses, and seven of the eleven hulls here are listed under a name they have since dropped. A name-based check run earlier in this research thread — which did check these vessels' current names, catching one apparent hit on CHONGCHON that turned out to be an unrelated substring match rather than a real designation — found no genuine hits among any of the eleven. For the seven renamed hulls, that is the expected result of checking the wrong name. For the remaining four (BELOMOR, ONEGA, CHONGCHON, SOFIA K), which are EU-listed under the name they carry today, this piece does not fully resolve why that earlier check missed them as well — the two checks likely draw on different underlying data with different coverage, and that gap is stated here rather than smoothed over. As a check on whether the IMO-matched list above is finding real signal rather than matching too loosely: the same method, run against Part 1's own seven hulls, returns EU designations for exactly the two hulls (AZALEA and ATLANT) Part 1 already independently reported as EU-designated, and no others — a clean consistency pass against already-published, independently-sourced findings.

The distinction between GUR-log membership and independent AIS confirmation is maintained throughout rather than collapsed into a single confidence grade, as is the distinction between EU designations independently matched against our own dataset and designations cited from a vessel's own OpenSanctions rationale text but not separately re-verified.

Part 4

Update, 12 August 2026: the six-company thread closed in Part 4. This section originally left two threads open: whether the six-company handoff sequence manages tonnage beyond the four hulls already confirmed, and a background-rate comparison against an unrelated tanker cohort calling the same ports. The first is now resolved — the six companies hold no vessels today, and DENVER, MIMOZA, MAGNOLIYA, and CETUS each trace individually to companies already named in this series, including a rename (CETUS to MERIDIAN) on a hull this series already reported as EU-designated under its own name. The background-rate comparison remains open, carried into Part 4 and still unresolved there. (Two further threads this section once carried are no longer open. A fourth thread — re-checking Part 1's and Part 2's own hulls against this same IMO-anchored EU designation method — closed when Part 2 was corrected directly, before this piece was finished, once the same method turned up designations for all eight of its own hulls; see Part 2's own "Every hull carries a designation the manager doesn't" section. And identifying SOYANA's historical MMSI, so its 2024 position history could be checked against the SKIRON hub the same way its counterparts already had been, closed on 12 August 2026: the MMSI was identified, backfilled, and SOYANA now confirms on both of the government log's own stated dates — see the correction in "An independent government log" above.) This piece stops at what has been verified; what has not yet been checked is not the same as what does not exist.

Use

This reconstruction and video are free to use, but you must credit AIS Dark.

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As of 9 August 2026.