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Old 02-07-2017, 07:59 PM   #9
Blissboat
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City: Jacksonville Beach, FL
Join Date: May 2015
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MYTraveler wrote, "Most interesting, to me, was that it is the trade association complaining that their unlicensed competition is subjecting the public to danger. That may be, but I suspect that, like most trade associations, their real concern is having to compete."

Operators of uninspected vessels who carry more than six passengers (for hire) can sometimes be a very real danger to the public, even if out of plain ignorance rather than avarice or malice. This is true even when the vessel is being captained by someone who holds a Coast Guard Operator or Master's license. Such individuals don't know what they don't know, making their business model (and the boat it's floating on) potentially a ticking bomb.

I know this because of my fifteen years in the passenger vessel industry. I started out singlehandedly captaining six-passenger charters, later running so-called "demise" charters (more than six people on an uninspected boat), and eventually managing and captaining inspected vessels carrying up to 500 passengers. I always believed that I was being cautious and responsible. I never had an accident. But I learned along my way, at each stage, and it began to dawn on me how little I had previously known, and how lucky my passengers and I had been.

Business owners in the PVA grumble among themselves about burdensome regulations, especially the Coast Guard's vessel inspection requirements. Compliance requires considerable expense and inconvenience. As a result, the public has a right to feel confident that a trip aboard a passenger vessel in the U.S. will be safe, and that in case of accident, equipment and resources are in place to avert injury or loss of life.

After jumping through all the complex, costly, at times mystifying hoops necessary to set up and maintain a legitimate passenger vessel business, and sweating out the bad times along with the good in the industry, it can be galling for a professional operator to watch someone with a private yacht load up fifteen or twenty folks for a "charter" cruise. When an accident does happen, it tends to hurt the whole industry, even though the fault might lie with someone who cut corners on having their vessel inspected and certified. As BandB observed, "The rules exist for a reason." That reason might not be obvious until you've been around the block a few times.

One of the things I learned in the boating business is that whenever someone else sees you making a few bucks, two or three other operations will pop-up trying to do the same thing, and fight you for those dollars. The public wins by having more choices and maybe lower prices. Fair enough. But competition in the passenger vessel business is already plenty tough without having to compete against people who don't play by the rules.
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