Question 1750 Deck Safety

The correct answer is A) reduce reserve buoyancy. Adding weight to a vessel will always reduce its reserve buoyancy, which is the amount of additional weight the vessel can carry before becoming submerged. As weight is added, the vessel sits lower in the water, reducing the amount of freeboard and thus decreasing the reserve buoyancy. The other options are incorrect because: B) increasing righting moments is not a guaranteed outcome of adding weight, as it depends on the weight distribution; C) increasing GM (metacentric height) is also not a guaranteed outcome, as GM can increase or decrease depending on how the weight is added.