Analysis of Recreational Crafts Accidents – Precondition for Improvement of Safety of Navigation in the Adriatic Sea

The number of marine accidents involving recreational crafts on the Adriatic Sea has been increasing in recent years, especially during high season. In this paper, research on marine accidents of recreational crafts in the Croatian part of the Adriatic Sea was conducted. The aim of the research was to identify the main types of recreational crafts that are most frequently involved in different categories of accidents in the Adriatic Sea by presenting trends and patterns such as geographical distributions, type of recreational crafts, seasonality, time of occurrence and distribution of fatalities according to vessel type, upon which recommendations are proposed according to findings. The research is based on a retrospective review and analysis of data from a total of 2.654 archived files of marine accidents involving recreational crafts, which includes a detailed review of the chronology of individual accidents, weather reports, attached photographic evidence, port authority’s reports, and a review of correspondence between Rescue Coordination Centers, sub-centers and competent ministries. The results of the analysis for the observed period are presented according to different categories, i.e., types of accidents, with the calculated values of statistical tests, for which the statistical program SPSS and the software STATISTICA 12 were used. The findings show that the majority of overall interventions are involved with recreational crafts and that the majority of rescued persons are caused by nautical tourism activities. Based on the conducted research, recommendations were made to increase safety in the domain of nautical tourism on the Adriatic Sea in terms of better training and education, especially for boat and sailing boat skippers.