The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has released its Safer Seas Digest 2023, highlighting the most important lessons learned from 31 maritime tragedies that took place last year involving capsizings, contact, collisions, fires, flooding and groundings.
Among the investigations, the most sobering investigations NTSB conducted involve the loss of human life. In 2023, they completed their investigation of the fatal collision between the Coast Guard cutter Winslow Griesser and the center-console boat Desakata, which took the life of one Desakata crewmember and seriously injured another.
“We found that neither vessel’s crew maintained a proper lookout, and we issued a Safety Alert encouraging small-vessel operators to improve their vessels’ detectability,” said NTSB.
According to NTSB, in 2023 the most prominent issues included the following:
– Small vessel detection
– Effective communication, including the proper reporting of chart changes and hazards
– Proactive equipment inspection
– Timely hull maintenance and repair
– Proper maintenance and repair of equipment and machinery
– Fatigue
– Anticipation of fire hazards, including those presented by lithium-ion batteries
– Firefighting training
– Effective watchkeeping
– Nonoperational cell phone use
– Lack of appropriate planning
– Excessive speed during bow-to-bow harbor-assist operations
– Reporting potential anchor strikes
Download the pdf digest: Safer Seas Digest 2023
