Castletownbere boat sank over a litany of failures

THE Marine Casualty Investigation Board (MCIB) has found a litany of failures during its probe into the capsizing of a fishing vessel which sailed from Castletownbere.

The MFV Discovery left the west Cork port in the early hours of January 27, 2007 with seven people onboard.

After a number of hours fishing it had a sizeable catch onboard. The crew began to pull in the catch in four “bags” and the vessel immediately started to list. By the time the third bag was landed the list was “significant”.

As the vessel continued to load fish, the gutting crew could see the amount of water was increasing to the starboard side.

“The situation continued to deteriorate rapidly and the skipper called to one of the crew to get lifejackets,” the report said.

“There was some confusion at this point, a number of crew were acting independently without instruction while others were unaware that the situation had become critical.”

One life raft was launched but was dragged under the water by a part of the boat which fell towards the water. Some of the crew had not managed to put on lifejackets or had only partly put them on and were in difficulty in the water.

Approximately 15 minutes later the boat sank. Several hours later all crew were picked up by an oil tanker MT Fort Commander.

The MCIB found that, amongst other things:

nThe skipper continued to load the catch despite the evident severe heeling of the vessel and made no attempt to find out what was causing the heel because he was intent on getting the fish onboard.

nThe crew did not inform the skipper about the inflow of water.

nNone of the crew were wearing personal flotation devices while working on deck.

nThe abandonment of the vessel was “confused and chaotic with no clear transmission of the skipper’s orders to the crew”.

“The crew owe their survival to the fact the incident occurred in daylight in calm conditions,” the report said.