Every passenger or cargo vessel which is being used for international traffic and which has a gross tonnage of 500 or more must have, as of 1 July 2004, a Continuous Synopsis Record (CSR) in line with the SOLAS Convention (XI-1/5).
The CSR is maintained in Finland by the register authorities, which are the State Department of Åland and the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency Traficom. These provide Finnish vessels with the required CSR documents. The information for the documents is obtained from the ship manager, who must also report any changes to this information. The language used for the register is English.
When a ship is registered in Finland, the information recorded in the CSR must be reported to Traficom. Changes to this information must be reported within 30 days of the change taking place. The information is provided using the form entitled notification of amendment to CSR.
The original CSR documents are always kept on the ship. When the flag state is changed, the documents are left on the ship. When a ship is deleted from the register, the deletion process involves the register authority providing the ship with a CSR document which indicates the date of deletion. The register also provides a copy of this document to the ship register of the new flag state. For this reason, the contact details for the new register must be provided when deleting a ship from the Finnish register.
A list of changes to the CSR is kept on the vessel in the form of an Index of Amendments (External link).
The IMO numbers of the ship and the shipping company must be recorded in the CSR document. IMO numbers can be obtained directly from the International Maritime Organisation. IMO numbers can be applied for at http://www.imonumbers.lrfairplay.com (External link)