Tasmania cancels registrations of ‘clearly unsafe’ boats
Marine and Safety Tasmania rips regos off three boats in two weeks as part of safety crackdownTasmania has started cracking down on boats it considers unsafe, cancelling registrations of the vessels it fears could be a danger to those who use them.
The campaign will target boats that are “clearly unsafe”, focussing mainly on the state's fleet of ageing fibreglass and aluminium hulls that could be hiding dangers not visible to an untrained eye.
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The department announced yesterday that it had cancelled the registration of yet another boat that was “clearly unsafe”, the third in the last two weeks.
Owners will be able to re-register their boats once they can show all the repairs had been made and signed off.
Catching suspect boats
MAST recreational boating safety and facilities general manager Peter Hopkins told boatsales.com.au the Tasmanian Government was looking to shore up its ability to force unsafe boats off the water, particularly the older boats that are aged more than 20 years that don't have a build date registered with the government.
"We're looking at stengthening our by-laws to get more of these boats, particularly the definition of an unsafe vessel," Caulfield said.
He said the government was also looking at the possibility of making new owners of secondhand boats provide some form of documentation to say the boats they were buying were structurally sound when they submitted the paperwork to transfer ownership.
Failure linked to deaths
The crackdown relates to a coroner's report last year that found a weakened boat transom had likely contributed to the deaths of four Tasmanians in 2016 who drowned after what is believed to be a catastrophic structural failure.
The boat was never found, and was believed to have sunk almost immediately.
The report noted that the boat’s transom was known to have structural problems before the incident.
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