Three Die as Nicola Faith Capsizes in Colwyn Bay — Overloaded Vessel's Stability Exhausted

4.6 Tonnes

On the morning of 27 January 2021, the whelk potter Nicola Faith capsized and sank in Colwyn Bay. All three crew were lost. The investigation found the vessel was carrying an estimated 4.6 tonnes of catch and pots on deck — a load that had eliminated its remaining positive stability. The capsize was sudden.

Two features of the vessel compounded the danger. A plywood deck canopy, fitted over the working area to improve conditions for the crew, trapped them below when the vessel went over. And the port whelk hold could not be accessed from inside the vessel after capsize, because its cover was closed. No formal stability assessment had been carried out since modifications were made to the vessel. None of the three crew were wearing personal flotation devices.

The Warnings That Were Already There

Nicola Faith had listed excessively and shipped water before this trip. Those events should have been read as direct evidence that the vessel was operating beyond its safe parameters. Instead, operations continued unchanged — the previous incidents were absorbed as one-off occurrences rather than treated as a pattern demanding action. The decision to keep loading heavily was made in a commercial context, maximising the catch on a working boat. The consequence was the loss of three lives.

Recommended Actions

The MAIB made recommendations to the MCA, the Welsh Government, and the fishing industry addressing stability monitoring and overloading risk in small fishing vessels. The findings point every skipper and owner of a small potter or creeler toward the same practical steps:

1. Know your vessel's maximum safe load in its current configuration — and check what's actually on deck against it before you sail, not by feel
2. Treat any deck modification that could obstruct escape — a canopy, an additional structure, a covering — as requiring a formal safety review before it's fitted, not after
3. Treat any incident of listing or water-shipping as a direct trigger to reassess loading and stability, not as a one-off to note and continue past
4. Keep a current, formal stability assessment for the vessel, and review it whenever the vessel's configuration or loading pattern changes
5. Wear a PFD on deck at all times — not stowed below, where it does no good in the seconds a sudden capsize allows

Human Element Analysis