Stability - basic information, links

[Guillermo]

Mori,
Something from the Wolfson Unit:

"Development of Safety Guidance for Fishermen

Over the past 3 years the Wolfson Unit has been working on a number of contracts for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency to develop a simple method of safety guidance. The fishing industry has a relatively poor safety record, but proposals for increased regulation consistently meet with resistance from the industry. An alternative approach has now been proposed by the Wolfson Unit, to provide each vessel with a single page Stability Notice which will help fishermen to judge the level of safety of their vessel in relation to the sea conditions that they are operating in. Rather than penalise some vessels, it will advise fishermen of the limitations of their craft in terms of stability.

The guidance will include information on loading of the vessel, and lifting of heavy loads over the side. These notices are not intended to give precise predictions of when a capsize might occur, but to encourage the fishermen to become more aware of the hazards and the degree to which they affect safety. For the large vessels with stability booklets the guidance is based on an assessment of the residual stability when loaded or when lifting. For the thousands of small vessels with no stability information the guidance is based on the residual freeboard, a parameter which the fisherman should be able to estimate. For these small vessels the freeboard guidance is based on the length and beam of the vessel, with no expensive surveys or calculations required. It is hoped that these Stability Notices will become commonplace in the near future, and will help to improve the safety culture.

Whilst it has been developed for the UK fleet, the method is considered relevant to the worldwide fishing industry, in particular to address the very poor safety record within fleets of small vessels in developing countries. The concept was introduced to delegates at the IMO SLF meetings in July and aroused considerable interest. A paper describing the method will be presented by Barry Deakin at the STAB 2006 conference in Rio de Janeiro in September."

Cheers

[CDBarry]

Note that there is a Coast Guard NVIC and an ABS guidance document on the preparation of stability data. NVIC 5-86 also contains guidance on stability data presentation.

[kach22i]

Some great links and downloads in this thread, thanks.