Coast Guard October 11, 2011 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Coast Guard is amending its regulations for certain lifesaving equipment, including launching appliances (winches and davits), release mechanisms, survival craft (lifeboats, inflatable liferafts, and inflatable buoyant apparatuses), rescue boats, and automatic disengaging devices. The amended regulations harmonize the Coast Guard's design, construction, and performance standards for this lifesaving equipment with international standards. In addition, the regulations provide for the use of qualified independent laboratories, instead of Coast Guard inspectors, during the approval process and for production inspections of certain types of lifesaving equipment. Because the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has recently changed its international standards for lifeboat release mechanisms, the Coast Guard is issuing these amended regulations as an interim rule and will finalize the regulations after proposing amendments as necessary to address the recent IMO changes regarding release mechanisms. Additionally, recent IMO action modified the international standards for liferafts, and the Coast Guard is proposing new changes to its regulations to implement the modified international standards. The Coast Guard is publishing the proposal regarding liferafts separately in the Proposed Rules section of this issue of the Federal Register.