Licensing yacht ownership?

Fergus

Fergus

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How long before this happens? One of my greatest pleasures in sailing is the lack of red tape but some Eurocrat is bound to wake up and do something. For instance I chartered a brand new 36' in Scotland last year - no questions (or qualifications) were asked and I just sailed off for 10 days. It's not the same elsewhere though!
 
Who knows. But its a bit difficult to justify a situation in which anyone can take a 6 tonne (or so) boat to sea relying on the RNLI etc to bail them out of problems.

Would you be happy for anyone who wanted to hire a 6 tonne truck for the day.? No license, no qualifications? Maybe not directly equivalent but similar.

And incidentally, it can be done elsewhere. My son and three of his mates chartered a 43 footer in the Med this year, with damn all practical experience and no qualifications whatsoever.
 
IMHO its inevitable...... could be a problem for many.... but it'll happen.....

Suspect it'll be skipper licensing, rather than boat licensing to start with.... but wouldn't be at all suprised if 10 years from now that all boats will need to meet an MCA standard rather like charter boats do today.....

Seems to me that the RYA qualifications will be the obvious starting point..... or perhaps there will be a 'driving test' equivalent?.... the UK ICC qualification?
 
The big question is - what problems would licencing solve? It would set up a self-funding bureacracy for no particular gain. The difference between a boat and truck is that people very rarely kill anybody but themselves and their crew in a boat - and even that doesn't often happen.

Thank god the RNLI is charitably funded otherwise we'd get complaints from taxpayers for rescuing anybody who the average non-sailor thought was being reckless.

I liked the Irish approach where they abandoned driving tests for 20 years without any noticeable rise in accidents and swept away a whole civil service department.
 
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Who knows. But its a bit difficult to justify a situation in which anyone can take a 6 tonne (or so) boat to sea relying on the RNLI etc to bail them out of problems.

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Of course, that sort of thinking is just how the bureucrats would justify such a license. What you need to counter their argument with is hard stats on just how safe the hobby is in its current self-regulating way. How many deaths are accidents rather than incidents that would have been prevented by a 'license for yacht ownership?' etc.

Frankly, the RNLI and their 'lives saved' count don't help matters on that front.

Rick
 
I think you're missing the beaurocrat's stance here, by a mile. The safety issues are only the ammunition to create a money-grabbing scheme. The overiding factor is that the money doesn't go anywhere other than to support the salaries and empires of the mandarins involved. That's how they sell the idea. The money just covers the administration costs - of Sir Phla Phla who picks up £130K PA and all the lesser individuals who "have meetings" and soak up the rest.
No benefit to the yachtsmen.
 
Despite extensive testing and licensing of car driving young men are expensive to insure.

Those who cannot afford the cars and the insurance and the tax drive nonetheless often with well known consequences.

Nothing is inevitable in this life save death and taxes. Consent is first of all required before legislation can come into effect.
 
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Consent is first of all required before legislation can come into effect

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Think you are mixing up the passing of a law and the willingness of the public to obey that law. There appears to be little correlation between the two.

This government has proved that it can pass lots of laws against the will of the public who are affected by that law. But a number of those laws have proven to be ineffective, because the public are not willing to obey them.
 
Re: Here\'s how it\'ll work.

First they'll discover a security angle. Now this really exists to a certain extent so it's not difficult to make the case.

The boat will be the target initially, not the driver.

The system they could use to impliment some sort of registration already exist in the port & harbour authorities .

Small boat AIS is on the cards but it has little value unless everybody is "encouraged" to use it. If they can get us all on it it makes checking your licensed status pretty easy to check.

Adoption of AIS and licensing could become a mandatory term of insurance for example.

Charges inline with car insurance would recover enough dosh to fund the system.

Unless the world changes markedly for the better, in the next few years I would suggest we are at the fag end of our cherished freedoms.

If you don't believe it look at security in the workplace and how it's increased over recent years. Look at shipping and the hoops they have to jump through to comply with legislation undreamed of 10 years ago.
 
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I liked the Irish approach where they abandoned driving tests for 20 years without any noticeable rise in accidents and swept away a whole civil service department.

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Could you please point me to any more info on this? It sounds very interesting and would supply some good ammunition in the imminent Swedish debate about "boat licensing".
 
There's probably a huge amount more on the web about this but here's a link to an excerpt from an Irish parliamentary debate in 1961 where the made the decision to start driving tests again, impose arbitrary speed limits etc. etc. - many of the arguments could be used for boating, I think.

http://www.oireachtas-debates.gov.ie/D/0186/D.0186.196102220063.html

And here's my favourite quote from the bits of the debate I've looked at.

MR EVERETT:
Members have made statements that they are in favour of driving tests but all the experts at the time were entirely against driving tests.
They held that an attempt to educate the driver to have patience and courtesy on the road was more important than driving tests. Even in the very Government services themselves, it was found that drivers who passed the driving test were responsible for a greater number of accidents than those who had no driving tests. The Minister made a speech on the Local Government Bill in 1958 and said that, regardless of what the experts might [792] say, he personally was in favour of having a test for drivers and was going to bring it into operation.
 
Yes. The government is going to propose the introduction of some kind of licensing scheme this fall. Currently Sweden has a system of voluntary courses quite like the British. For boats longer than 12 m even today a course (and exam) is compulsory.

The reason for this new proposal is the increasing number of fast powerboats behaving rudely. It is as of now still unclear which kinds of boats will be included in the new compulsory scheme. It is likely that it will apply to boats of certain speed or engine power.

Hopefully the courses and tests will not be state controlled but still carried out by the clubs and organisations just like today, only that more boats will be affected.

The debate, of course is about if licensing is the right way or if the rude poweboaters will take the test and still drive rudely, or if they will just ignore the scheme. It is unlikely that police and coastguards has the resources to enfore the law anyway.

Also people are worried that the system would open the door for some kind of boat registration/tax scheme. Others would perfer a general speed limit for the Skerries.

So I guess it is quite the same debate as you are having, only that our current government has come a bit longer on the way already.
 
There are two issues here (at least). One is the licencing of a vessel and the other the licencing of the person in charge and I think the arguments are different. Motor vehicles are licenced (registered) so that their owners may be traced, to assist in crime investigations etc. They are taxed - initially the tax was a 'road fund' but we all know how long ago that fell into disrepute. A while ago (it was a Conservative Government) examined the abolition of the road fund licence but at least one of the arguments was how do you get people to bother to register their vehicle. The RFL provides a visible check and therefore some level of currency of registration in either a real or false name with some sort of address that at one time existed. (it all wheezes a bit at the seams as a theory doesn't it?) Does the Government or Society need a similar system for boats? I would guess not at the moment unless Gordon thinks he can make some money out of it.

As for the licencing of people to use motor vehicles, the point of that is to set a level of competence. Yea Gods we could debate that for ever but I would be grateful if you didn't abolish the driving test for the next twenty years as my daughter has just made herself self sufficient as a driving instructor! But that bias aside is there a need for minimum levels of competence. The 'Duty of Care' notion is the thing that will bring this in - you're in charge of the vessel, you have a duty of care to those on board and that requires some level of competence - Solas is going this way with the requirement to plan a passage; once it was left to the individual to have the sense to have thought through where he/she was going to go. So the creeping incrementalism has started. I'm amazed though that a brand new 36' footer could be chartered with no questions asked.
 
Just who will judge who, just where do you start. A 20 something just out of uni, will judge a 75 year old salt, yeah right. It will be someone with no practical boating experience, but a uni degree in red tape. Who should be qualified to do that, I thing is the real question.
I nominate Tony Bullimore.
Who do you nominate?
Lets have some fun with this
 
Well I reckon that the examination for a licence should revolve around your interpretation of Col Regs.
That would make it cut and dried. Wouldn't it?
 
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I liked the Irish approach where they abandoned driving tests for 20 years without any noticeable rise in accidents and swept away a whole civil service department.

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Err... another case of fiction clearly sounding better than the fact.

I remember in the 70's when the Irish Driver Testing office got so overwhelmed with applications they decided to retrospectively issue full licenses to those who had held their provisional for xx number of years.

Contrary to the quote above - this led to a period where driving on Irish roads became very very dangerous.

Today, Ireland has a testing / licensing authority again in place - just like all other EU countries.

I'm a yachtsman and like most others, don't think we need any more legislation and I hate the idea of added costs.

But to watch the various arguments trying to support the current position - where one can shell out a few hundred thousand and then be legally able to charge around a packed water area risking life and limbs of self and others in boats capable of 60-80 mph - is surely a joke?

There was a time when our sport was a slower more gentlemanly affair. The few who took part as kids were taught by dad, another family friend, or a local club. Most yachts only did 5 / 6 knots max - and only a very few could afford to drive any power vessel that could maybe do 20 mph.

Sorry folks - but we all know its not like that any more.

Like it or not, we're in a rapidly growing sport in a world where people expect to learn quickly and get underway immediately.

IMHO this is why vessel driver licensing - structured to limit speed / power alongside adequate education / experience - has to come to the UK.

Cheers
JOHN
 
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