Substandard vessels stopped from operating

Inspectors found that the emergency exit from below deck was sealed shut by marine sealant preventing passenger escape in an emergent situation as well as multiple unapproved electrical system alterations.

It’s tempting to say something about the timing of shutting the door, but there are plenty of horses left in the stable… Also, that’s pretty egregious.

The USCG should implement a “surprise inspection” program of a certain percentage of vessels of each type annually.

I would love to see those results…

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So the industry took no lessons after Conception?
Are they criminals or just stupid?

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US Flagged, and you wonder why the US fleet is always near the bottom of the White List or even on the Grey List of some MoU’s.

Does US flag vessels in domestic trade (the majority) ever get exposed to PSC under any of the MoUs?

PS> I know that USCG perform PSCs on foreign ships visiting US ports:

No, and that is probably the reason they are not on the Black List.

Most of the USCG oversight is at pre-scheduled periodic inspections, or After incidents.

The USCG is primarily interested in being “the military,” anti-terrorism, drug interdiction, and “homeland security”.

The USCG tolerates doing fisheries enforcement because it gives them a chance to board fishing vessels like heavily armed storm troopers.

The USCG still does a good job on Aids to Navigation. and an awesome job on helicopter SAR.

The USCG has pawned off afloat vessel assistance to boaters to outfits like SeaTow.

The USCG lost interest in vessel inspections and licensing a long time ago. It’s temporary assignment that is hated because it’s not good for “military career progression.” Most of the inspectors look like teenagers and sound like they just fell off the turnip truck in Oklahoma.

Inspection and licensing needs to be taken away from the USCG and given to a new specialist shipping regulation civilian agency. The USCG would be glad to hand over these unwanted duties.

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Egregious is a good word… I’m also wondering why this news item is only being carried on a Russian web site? Nothing wrong with that, but you would have thought that the SoCal news media and especially the publications related to the industry (sport fishing & diving) would be interested. I did a somewhat cursory search, but nothing turns up more recent than the Conception fire news items. Maybe I didn’t use the right terms…

EDIT TO ADD: Well, I needed better search terms - I looked again and found the USCG news release (which the above article quotes) plus at least one local newspaper article. No additional info, however.

If you copied the title of this thread you should find many copies of the USCG article

FYI; The Russian web site Port News features maritime news from all over the world, not just Russia, They use the English language, as do similar maritime web sites and news letters from many other parts of the world.

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Yes, and as I stated, my search terms were not good enough. But I’m still surprised that there wasn’t more media interest in the US locally.