The ship’s first power outage occurred after a crew member mistakenly closed an exhaust damper while conducting maintenance in port, causing one of its diesel engines to stall, according to the report. A backup generator automatically came on and continued to run for a short period — until insufficient fuel pressure caused it to kick off again, resulting in a second blackout. While recovering from those power outages, crew members made changes to the ship’s electrical configuration, switching to a different transformer and set of breakers, according to safety investigators. “Switching breakers is not unusual but may have affected operations...
