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Avoiding Capsizing And Swamping

A study of five years of capsizes and swampings reveals how they happen and what you can do to avoid them.

It was July 4, 2012, when a 34-foot cabin cruiser headed out into Long Island Sound for the fireworks show. The boat, called Kandi Won, was packed with 27 people — eight of them high on the flybridge — and when the fireworks ended, the boat headed home along with many others, all jockeying for position and all creating wakes. Shortly after, the boat, probably rocked by several large wakes, rolled over, spilling passengers into the water. Tragically, three children were trapped in the cabin and died. While capsizes are far more common on smaller boats, it's a sobering reminder that even large boats can capsize under the right conditions.

What causes boats to capsize? In a word, instability. Boats are inherently stable until something causes them to become unstable (see Stability sidebar). And that something is weight — where it is and how much it is determines when a boat will tip over far enough to capsize or fill with water. BoatUS Marine Insurance analyzed five years of capsizes and swampings, to find out what you can do to prevent your own boat from capsizing. https://www.boatus.com/seaworthy/magazine/2016/august/avoiding-capsizing-and-swamping.asp