4.3 Permission expired
The parallel to de-registration in flagging-in situations (Section 40b), is that the flagging-out permission is no longer valid, cf. Section 40c. The vessel is now entitled to fly the Norwegian flag and is within Norwegian jurisdiction in public law matters (paragraph two).
The permission expires:
(i) When the charter party ends. This may be due to a number of reasons: the time stated in the contract has expired, the contract is cancelled by the owner or the charterer, the vessel is lost, a forced sale has extinguished the contract, or the parties have amicably agreed to terminate the contract.
(ii) When the vessel no longer is “temporarily entitled to sail under the flag of the foreign register”. Whether this will happen depends primarily upon the rules of the bare boat state.
The owner of the vessel is under a duty to notify the Norwegian register as soon as possible and at the latest 30 days after the end of the charter party. Here there is a subsidiary rule: where notification is not given in accordance with this, but the registrar becomes aware from other sources that the contract is ended, he may delete the charter party – but only after giving the owner the opportunity to express his view.
The owner may contend that the registration should be deleted, e.g. because the charter party is cancelled, but the charterer disagrees. According to MC Section 40c, deletion follows from the owner’s notification, and protests from the charterer are irrelevant. The travaux preparatoires(1) Prop. 32 L (2019‑2020) p. 27. say that contractual issues between the owner of the vessel and the bare boat charterer, including whether the bare boat charter party is rightfully cancelled, are matters that the parties will have to resolve later in the courts of the agreed venue.(2) If the court decides that cancellation was unwarranted, the remedy is damages for the loss suffered by the charterer. In principle, there is also the possibility of demanding specific performance – when registration now is accepted, the contra arguments indicated in 2.3 are no longer valid. However, specific performance occurring a long time after the declaration of cancelling and deletion from the register appears to be practical only in very special circumstances.
As indicated above, the question of the exact time of reestablishing Norwegian jurisdiction is discussed in Prop. 32 L (2019‑2020) pp. 26‑27. Do the rights and obligations for Norway exist from the end of the permission period/end of the charter party, or is the moment of deletion decisive? The discussion makes it reasonably clear that the answer is the latter. Nor in this connection is international law mentioned.