Preventing mooring line injuries Mooring line incidents involving seafarers are a large point of focus for the Club given that such incidents can often cause severe injuries or death and lead to significant claims. These incidents can occur during the handling of mooring lines by crewmembers, or involve lines that have parted or have slipped off of drum ends or bitts. Parted lines normally occur during general mooring, tug and ship-to-ship operations, with equipment failure/misuse and weather also playing a role. Injuries from non-parted lines normally occur due to crew being caught up in lines or lines slipping off and becoming jammed on drum ends during mooring operations. The majority of serious incidents in mooring areas involve parting lines. In accordance with the International Safety Management Code, every vessel should have a risk assessment for mooring operations, and the company’s expectations with regards to how these operations shall be conducted and documented or otherwise should be made known to the crew. Ship Safety Assessments The UK Club’s Loss Prevention department conducts ship Safety Assessments for its Members, with one consideration being whether the vessel’s mooring equipment is of appropriate standards for the undertaken operations. This includes inspection of equipment involved in mooring operations, review of certificates for the ropes, wires and stoppers in use, and review of the schedules for inspection, maintenance and replacement of mooring equipment. The Club’s risk assessors also consider whether basic design factors are appropriate. Factors that are examined include whether there is good visibility from the position of the operator of the winches, use of anti-slip paint, snap-back paint marking for the entire mooring area, use of drip trays around all hydraulic winches, sufficient lighting at night, and appropriate gratings around walkways and winches. The Club’s Loss Prevention department also analyses mooring line and other inciden