Is your boat legal?

[Guest]

Here's something that is causing serious alarm in the boating world — most motorboats and sailboats over 45ft in length are illegal unless fitted with serious fire-fighting and life-saving equipment. And that means almost all of them.

The recent prosecution of a motor boat owner in Weymouth for failing to comply with regulations regarding safety equipment has thrown the marine industry into a state of confusion. Rodney Shipley was prosecuted by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency not only for smacking his 50ft Birchwood into Portland Breakwater, but for failing to comply with life-saving equipment regulations. Mr Shipley was unaware of any legal requirements regarding life-saving equipment, but that didn't stop the magistrates from fining him £2500 and making him pay a further £3500 in costs.

Basically, any motorboat (or sailing boat) 45ft or over becomes a Class XII vessel in the eyes of the Merchant Shipping Act and is therefore legally obliged to conform to certain life-saving and fire-fighting applicances regulations. This applies to private leisure craft, not just charter boats. The legislation is complicated and runs to 140 or so pages, but for any private pleasure craft 45ft and over built between 1985 and 1998 wanting to operate more than three miles offshore all year round, this is what you need to have on your boat (boats newer than 1998 have slightly more stringent requirements, but they're not significantly different to what you see below):


Mandatory Safety Equipment for Leisure Craft over 13.7 metres
(Length is calculated as LOA plus waterline length, divided by two)

Life-Saving:
* Liferaft complying as a minimum to the DOT98UK standard (not available in shops, apparently) readily transferrable to either side of the boat and of sufficient size to carry every person on board.
* Lifejackets for all crew members conforming to EN 396 or EN 399, with lights.
* Two lifebuoys, one fitted with a self-activating light and smoke-float. The one with the light and smoke must be a 4kg item, the other can be 2.5 kg. Both must be durable, highly visible and marked with retro reflective tape (the full spec goes on a bit) and marked properly by an approved manufacturer.
* Buoyant throwing line at least 18 metres in length.
* 6 parachute flares.
* Posters located by life-saving appliances showing the operation of said equipment.
* A training manual (a file containing all the instruction leaflets accompanied by a sea survival guide).
* Maintenance manuals for all equipment.
* A copy of the Life Saving Signals SOLAS 1 poster at the steering position


Fire-Fighting:
* A powered or hand-operated pump outside the engine room with a permanent sea connection and a fire hose with a nozzle of no less than 6mm producing a jet of water with a minimum reach of 6 metres which can be directed onto any part of the boat, as well as a spray nozzle.
* Two fire extinguishers, or fire buckets with suitable lanyards. The extinguishers should meet BS5423:1987 and be of a type approved by the MCA with the appropriate extinguishing material.


These regs apply to boats venturing more than 3 miles offshore and in the water between November and April. If you don't fall into that category then the regs are slightly less stringent, but not by much. Full details of the regs, check out the MCA's website, specifically: www.mcga.gov.uk/msn/msn1676.htm, or check out www.hmso.gov.uk/si/si1999/19992721.htm.

The ramifications of this are huge and far-reaching. Do boat manufacturers have a legal and moral responsibility to equip their products with the requisite safety equipment? Is your boat dealer breaking the law by selling you something that is possibly illegal to use? What would the Trading Standards people say about a dealer who sells you a boat that is technically illegal to use in UK waters? Is your insurance valid if your boat isn't carrying mandatory safety gear? And why haven't the BMF and RYA seen fit to inform us/their members/the public about any of this?

But no one knows. This became law on October 29th, 1999 and yet the boat builders, the boat dealers, the press, the British Marine Federation or the Royal Yachting Association were aware that there were legal requirements governing safety and fire-fighting equipment.

The MCA do have the power to board your boat and issue a detention order if you don't have the right kit on board, and that will prevent you using your boat until it is correctly equipped and a surveyor has "signed it off" as complying to the regs (and that will cost you at least £250).

For further details, see the August issue of MBY, on sale on July 4th.

So, if you've got a boat 45ft or bigger, are you breaking the law?

 

[tcm]

Re: All in order!

ooh yes, I have monster liferaft with all manner of stickers. And especially a very massive fire hydrant with extrnal sea connections from outside the engineroom, and some other things too. But I have not tried to use them.

So next time on the boat I will ensure that everyone coming on the boat goes through an extremely rigourous training schedule!! For extra safety one night during the week we'll have a nighttime fire drill and handle an imaginary fire in one of the cabins (not mine). ...oops just realised this must apply to British Flagged boats.....sorry, now everythings sopping wet!.. I'll have a go at the hydrant thing tho just to drench the kids with supersoakers

Seriously, our fairline (which was over 14m) had no hint of firefighting stuff except for extinguishers which (to show the kids) i decided to use one a bit, and it didn't work. No hydrant thing. Probly wdn't work anyway...

Mind you, er, if there was a fire, boat all nicely cnected to shorepower or with genny on.. wd anyone want to ponce about with fire hydrnts? Not me. If you were succesful and put fire out..then it'd sink anyway with all the water. Much better to get boat away from others if poss, everyone off boat, and lettit burn to ensure full payment from insurers who wd be jolly pleased at no 3rd party claim?

 

[Guest]

Re: S\'all b*ll*cks

Having used dry powder extinguishers in anger on a car fire some years ago, I can happily say they're pointless. Agree with tcm, you just get the hell out. The only purpose for extinguishers is to buy enuf time to get the liferaft/tender launched, and get a mayday out...

 

[Guest]

Re:Maybe, but...

This isn't about whether fire extinguishers work or not. Or whether this legislation is a good idea. It's about your legal obligations. If you don't have the right stuff on board you can be fined large amounts of money, and it's possible your insurance company won't cover you in the event of a fire or an accident.

It's also about whether or not boat-builders and dealers should be selling things that cannot legally be used in UK waters. And whether they'll issue recall notices on all their >45ft boats sold since October 1999.

 

[tcm]

legality, fires, and t\'Media

Any response from boatbuilders, i wonder (other than fainting away dead on the floor?)

incidentally, I have once put out an engine fire in a car using a possibly readers' digesty method: Put it into neutral, and then lift revs gently towards 90% of max revs and hold it there. Idea is that this sucks the embryonic fire out. You need some nerves to do it whilcst smoke creeping into car thru vents and also presumably if burning smell and smoke up from engine room on boat. Also blowers off obviously. another time on a motorbike i let it burn and whole lot set fire to another and a van (both belonging to same bloke...)

Agree with Massaccio that this is not nec bout fire, but about regulations. Or is it? is it perhaps about a unfettered and highly competitive UK press?

They publicise all the regulations regarding food hygiene, blast headlines at fever pitch if anyone buys anything a bit dodgy from butchers shop in scotland, and generally "police" (through alarming headlines) the tiniest regulation, and the fact that XYZ (sainsburys, hen farms, slaughter houses, fishermen, politicians, and now boatbuilders) don't comply. Aargh!

Net results are buring millions of cows for not very good reasons, being charged loads more for food, chucking out politicians who (aargh) actually er asked questions in parliament after being bunged a few extra quid (seems quite a good system really since nobody bothers with parliament at all now)

....and now possibly UK boats having to obey loads of rules everyone else had forgotten about, and which logic indicates wd be failry useless anyway.

all imho....

 

[peterg]

is that 45ft LOA? or manufacturers figure

if so I can see the sales of 44ft 11in boats increasing and the manufacturers suddenly chopping a foot or so off the bathing platform to get inside the regulation length

currently boatless

 

[Guest]

Re: is that 45ft LOA? or manufacturers figure

The legal definition is LOA + waterline length, divided by 2

 

[Guest]

Re: legality, fires, and t\'Media

It wasn't that everyone had forgotten about the rules...most people had never heard of them in the first place. And the MCA hadn't forgotten about them...they prosecuted Mr Shipley for not complying with them.

But I take your point about the media/sensationalism thing. However, magazines such as MBY have a duty to let their readers know that they might find themselves on the wrong end of a law about which they knew nothing. And members of the RYA and British Marine Ferderation (who pay for the priviledge of membership) might want to know why the legal people failed to spot this one and advise their members accordingly.

Anyway, my shares in Pains-Wessex, McMurdo, Crewsaver etc, are all in need of a lift, so get out there and get shopping ;o)

 

[DepSol]

Re: All in order!

And I thought the only extra equipment you had on board was a feather duster, some pledge, a cloth to mop up coke spills and some sandpaper ;-)

Dom


I just want my boat back in the water ;-(

 

[tcm]

Pah!

Perfectly good opportunity for an e-scrap avoided!

Anyway, I am still intent upon expermentiing with fire hydrant, perhasp a new way of cleaning boat and ridding it of slightest spec of grime (and kids, hehehe)

 

[Guest]

Re:Ooops...sorry!

Didn't mean to spoil your fun...just trying to alert the malodorous masses hereabouts as to this potentially scary piece of legislation that no one seems to have noticed.

Re your previous point about what boat manufacturers say...the general reaction was stunned silence, followed by "we build our boats according to RCD regs" (not relevant), followed by "we'll have to take advice from the British Marine Federation". The reaction from the BMF (and RYA) was "what legislation?" Doh! Currently not one Sunseeker, Fairline, Princess or Sealine between 13.7m and 20m conforms to the regs, and nor do most (if not all) imported boats, either.

Of course none of this relevant to you (over 21.3 metres, in French waters, and foreign-flagged). But for a lot of UK motorboaters and blow-boaters, the prospect of the MCA breathing down their necks is not a good one.

 

[ChrisP]

Interesting point. The CE mark on a new vessel indicates that the manufacturer is declairing that the vessel conforms to all the requirements relating to the vessel that are manditory for equipment sold within the European Comunity. I haven't yet been able to find out if the legislation you refer to is included directly or indirectly in the recreational directive. It is obviously included in the related comercial marine directives. One for the legal parrasites. If the legilation is not in the recreational directive is it incumbent on the purchaser to comply?

Maybe the smarties in the magazines could investigate and advise. They could even claim it as usefull editorial in place of the rubbish advertising we are bombarded with.

What do you mean the sea gull in front's walking !!!

 

[tcm]

Re: All in order!

Git!

I even have a saw, to hack off the swim platform and perhaps a few feet of the front just in case any inspection doesn't go very well.

 

[wakeup]

FYI

http://www.ce-marking.org/directive-9425ec-Recreational-Craft.html



yada yada..

 

[tcm]

Re: bit unfair on mr shipley

Poor chaps comprehensivley whacked his boat up the breakwater, now he's getting done for lack of firefighting gear. Eh? Isn't this like smashing the car up and getting done for illegal headlights? After all, it isn't a boat now, cos it doesn't float. Or, in the alternative m'lud, there was loads of firefighting gear but it all got nicked...

 

[cngarrod]

Re: Thank God for that

It is unlikely that i will ever have sufficient funds to own such a craft... will have to stick with me full evian bottle and sauce pans full of water to throw over the flames... while SWMBO beats me for getting into this mess in the first place... "I told you no good woudl come of this....."

Yes Dear - springs to mind!!!

Cheers,

C

 

[Gludy]

Another advantage of jets

Now, if I get my new jet boat, I will simply attach a hose to the jet outlet - hold the hose with 700hp of water blast behind it and aim it at the fire!

The result will either be a world record whip lash of me and the hose, over the stern and placing me well clear of the fire - or, if by some miracle I mange to hold onto to it, it would wash away the fire - penetrating decking and everything to get to it. Just have to stop before it power jets a hole in the hull!

Now you cannot do that with props!!

Paul

 

[tcm]

mr shipley and legal advice

As far as i can see frrom the excellent pic by T Isitt in MBY 2002, the boat in question is most of the way up the breakwater, hence waterline length of about 6 feet. = 2metre, plus LOA = total 17 metres , divide by 2 = 8.5 metres so haha mr MCA nerenerner

Ahem, in the alternative m'lud, my client was fully aware of safety regulations and so attempted to extract himself odf the sea as quickly as possible.

Mr shipley must be a bit daft if a) whacks in portland breakwater and b) when bloke asks him "are you aware of the safety regulations" he says "no" instead of...

"Yes, of course! - i made a mistake. Have you - or any of us NEVER made a mistake? I've made a mistake, and have paid dearly for that mistake! I can buty fling myself upon the mercy of the court. I only ask that perhasps my children - who diverted my attention when i noticed that their lifejackets weren't quite done up properly - are not also asked to pay for my mistake if the court should decide to fine me, as that would require that I sell the house and move somewhere cheaper, away from their friends at school where they were doing so well, and which would also stop my wife from her valuable work in the social services and me from continuing to work fixing NHS computers, sob, but I fully recognise the gravity of my mistake. "

There, that should do it .

 

[Guest]

Re: mr shipley and legal advice

Methinks you'd make an excellent barista.

 

[tcm]

Re: jets again

I am very concerned at your potential new craft!

Yiour attention may be diverted by the nasty green carpets. Or, if there are no such carpets, you may be down below gleefully counting how much money you are saving by blasting along as fast as possible, and by going even faster, for longer, perhaps at night you may also end up on portland breakwater like Mr Shipley.

However, with the jets and extra speed there is at least half a chance of you getting on to the flat bit and when the rnli come out you can be touching up the antifioul, so just get nicked for using illegal slipway.

Fire-wise there is of course no danger at all cos it'll be pissing down unless you get to the med.

Also you would have to attach the watsit to both outlets so you'd be blammin along on one engine while hospeipe flings you about.

Anyway, I still doubt the turning ability of the jet boat in unknown waters where there are no sixpences on which it can turn. You'd have to rush to the front, throw out some sixpences, then return to helm by which time...