News item | 01-12-2023 | 12:50
All sailing passenger ships in the historic sailing fleet will be additionally examined before April 1, 2024. It is one of the measures to ensure that the fleet becomes demonstrably safer before the start of the next sailing season. Minister Harbers of Infrastructure and Water Management informed the House of Representatives of this.
The measures follow the report that the Dutch Safety Board published in September, following two fatal accidents involving historic sailing ships. The OVV found that recommendations made after a fatal accident in 2016 had not been sufficiently followed.
The report prompted Minister Harbers to put together a task force including all parties involved: the ministry, the Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate (ILT), the Accreditation Council, inspection bodies and the trade association for professional charter shipping (BBZ). This task force is now preparing everything for the additional mast and rigging surveys to begin from January. The first investigations will be carried out in December, so that we can get off to a good start in January.
One of the agencies that carries out inspections for inland shipping was recently suspended by the Accreditation Council. But with the efforts of all parties involved, the additional studies can be carried out before the start of the sailing season. To this end, it is of course important that all skippers take their responsibility and fully cooperate in the investigations. The research is carried out in pairs of experts from the market and ILT inspectors.
The task force has developed two different types of measures to make the fleet demonstrably safer: short-term measures, such as the additional examination of the ships’ mast and rigging on the basis of rejection criteria included in inspection instructions, and measures that require more time .
In addition to the additional research, efforts are being made to have more skippers join the trade organization BBZ, as a lot of knowledge and information about safety is available there. Currently only 40% of skippers are connected. The ministry and the ILT, together with shipowners and insurers, will look at how the remaining 60% can be achieved.
For the period after April 1, 2024, it will be examined, among other things, how the standards that the industry has developed itself can be laid down in regulations. It is also being examined whether the requirements for obtaining a sailing license need to be tightened.
Minister Harbers: “All parties are convinced that things must improve and have been committed to this since September. It is good that we can take these concrete steps in the coming months, but that we will also continue after April 1 to make the historic sailing fleet demonstrably safer. We owe that to all those on board.”