Boating Safety

A tour-boat accident on New York's Lake George that killed 20 people earlier this month raised questions about the safety of smaller passenger vessels, such as tour boats, ferries and fishing charters. How shipshape are such vessels? The short answer is that, in the U.S. at least, you're quite safe -- statistically speaking. But there are worrisome gaps in regulations. Passengers can take steps to protect their own safety.

Four people were overcome by suspected carbon monoxide fumes while on a boating day trip to Catalina Island, officials said. The Newport Beach family was eight miles offshore when the owner of the 28-foot, gasoline-powered cabin cruiser radioed the Harbor Patrol and reported that four people were unconscious, Orange County sheriff's Lt. Marty Kasules said. Two of the victims were inside the cabin and two others were just outside of the cabin.

Life jackets were not readily available on an Arkansas tourist boat that sank Saturday with the loss of 13 lives, and passengers were given no safety information before launch, a survivor said on Monday. Asked if the operator had given passengers any briefing, Robert Powers, 34, whose wife, Danna, 32, was among the dead, said: "None. None whatsoever."

Two men in a dinghy were rescued Tuesday several miles from Newport Harbor after they abandoned their sailboat, which had apparently been set afire by "careless smoking," one of the men said. While the Harbor Patrol said it was still investigating the cause of the 11:20 a.m. blaze, the boat's owner, Johan Per Aslander, said later he thought the fire may have started in a trash can below deck.

Coast Guard officials looking into the disappearance of a 41-foot fishing trawler and all seven crew members off Santa Cruz Island focused Monday on the possibility that the vessel capsized because 3,000 pounds of ballast recently had been removed. The loss of ballast "would have made the boat less stable," increasing potential for a rollover, said Lt. Cmdr. Pete Rennard, who is heading the investigation for the Coast Guard's Marine Safety Office in Long Beach.

The U.S. Navy has for decades ignored the safety of pleasure boaters in Anaheim Bay and shares responsibility for a 1984 speed-boat accident that took five lives, a Los Angeles federal judge ruled Thursday. Ticking off a list of minimal safety precautions that were not taken, U.S. District Judge James M. Ideman ruled that the government is potentially liable for half of the more than $20 million in damages being sought by survivors and relatives of the victims.