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RightShip Guide

THE DEEPDRAFT · RIGHTSHIP PREPARATION

Food, catering and potable water

RISQ 15.5Section 15 · Health and Welfare of SeafarersSource marking: V

Applicability: Apply to the vessel’s employment, accommodation and welfare arrangements, retaining each question’s stated conditions.

What is being checked

Free food and safe water are sufficient, with competent catering and water management.

Ready on board

0 / 7 checked

Check the vessel’s procedures and evidence against these RISQ 3.2 points. Keep personal wages, medical records and complaint details out of public contributions.

Provide sufficient good-quality nutritious, varied food, fruit/vegetables and potable water free of charge, with hygienic service and cultural/religious needs considered.Have the per-person daily food budget available for inspector comments.Have the cook’s age/qualification evidence under Flag requirements and training evidence for other food handlers.Have a Potable Water Management Plan covering source/delivery, sampling/analysis, storage-tank cleaning and onboard distribution.Address the source’s at-least-twice-yearly potable-water analysis and retain results.Include risk-based sampling of supply lines, tanks, toilets/showers, galley, cabins and other potable-water connections.Keep any non-potable supply in a separate, appropriately colour-coded piping system and maintain barriers against contamination through delivery, storage, treatment and outlets.

Practice questions

Preparation prompts derived from this entry, not an official inspector interview script. Use anonymised examples without personal medical or complaint information.

1Does providing bottled drinking water settle the entire potable-water check?

No. The source includes water for hygiene, food preparation, hospital use and cleaning as well as drinking.

Where a finding may arise

Explicit RISQ triggers: the only free water offered for human consumption is non-potable; or, in the source’s combined wording, no potable-water plan is in place and there is no evidence of testing at least twice yearly. Prepare evidence for both the plan and analysis.

Past observations for practice

Anonymised reports, manually reviewed before publication. These are reported experiences, not additional inspection requirements.

No reviewed observations have been added for this entry.

Share an observation for private review

Remove vessel, company and inspector names, report numbers, exact dates and confidential information. Do not paste a complete inspection report.

Source clarification

The excerpt says no cook is required below ten crew. Do not infer an automatic exemption solely from headcount; verify the ship’s applicable Flag arrangement and food-handler competence. Historical water-law references and the source’s testing frequency are not a complete current legal schedule.

References and source status

RightShip Inspection Ship Questionnaire, November 2025, version 3.2. Section 15, page 219–220, reference 15.5.

The explanation, checklist and practice answer derive from the supplied questionnaire. Reported observations are separately contributed and manually reviewed; they are not official RISQ guidance.

Independent DeepDraft preparation guide, based on the supplied RISQ 3.2 questionnaire. Not an official RightShip product or inspection report.