Capsize Budgets for Artisanal Fishing Boats: Hydrostatic Loading States and Low-Cost Stability Guidance for a 7 m Open Boat

Hydrostatic capsize budgets for a representative 7 m open artisanal fishing boat across six loading states. SIMULATED, NOT MEASURED; nothing was built or field-tested. The correctly loaded boat has metacentric height GM 0.411 m; stowing 400 kg of catch high instead of low costs 0.174 m of GM; four crew crowding to one side heel it 18.8 degrees; and the first state to go unstable is a flooded bilge and live-well whose undivided free surfaces impose a 0.474 m correction and drive GM to -0.091 m. Guidance priced in local materials: load marks (about $5), catch-low hold boards (about $30), free-surface subdivision (about $20, recovering 0.380 m), raised bulwarks (about $85) and sponsons (about $270, raising flooded-state GM to 0.485 m). Breaking seas and overloading beyond the marks are not fixed by any loading rule.