Quote:
Originally Posted by Lawn psyco
Quote:
Originally Posted by John A. Birdsall
How many of you can recall the license plate registration. That was for the motor not the boat. Sometimes a real pain in the neck. Have two outboards fine you have two registrations. And when they changed over to the system we use now the grumbling of marking up the bow with numbers. We did not even have the internet and the grumbling could be heard around the lake.
fees for reg. has gone up, and I have inherited a 26' boat this year. wait till the state realizes that a pontoon has two or three logs. They will try and say that is double the registration. And I have been trying for three months to change the registration from my fathers name to mine. They were nice though they said wait till after the first of the year and you will only register it once. If I registered it now I would have to pay for 2009 and ineight days I would have to pay again for 2010. Now that to me is kind of dumb.
Don't forget about them mooring fees. I think they are 25 to 30 @
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Just out of curiousity, do you recall what year did they start requiring bow numbers?
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Off the top of my head I don't recall the year, but it happened under pressure from the USCG. In order to boat on the ocean a vessel needs to have bow numbers or be documented. Because NH had license plates the Coast Guard had to register and assign bow numbers to NH ocean going recreational boats. They eventually stopped doing it and told NH to institute a bow number program or recreational boaters offshore would be in violation of the law. Initially after NH started issuing bow numbers they were not reciprocal so out of state boats needed to buy a NH registration decal to add to their out of state bow numbers. Eventually that went away as well.
As to a registration decal for currently unregistered boats, a simple solution would be a one time fee, assigning a number on a decal to be located on the vessel to serve two purposes. It would raise money and the number on the decal could be listed in a database identifying the owner so that if the boat broke free and was found floating capsized it would help in cutting down unnecessary SARs. When a currently unregistered boat is resold privately the new owner needs to notify the state paying a one time fee transferring the decal number to the new owner on the database. When purchased new via retail the owner gets a form to fill out and submit.
I think the one time fee is all that is probably necessary because there are easily hundreds of thousands of these boats in NH already, and probably thousands more sold every year in NH. It would more than fund the establishment of a database and add to the MP budget.
My personal choice for a penalty for not getting the decal is pretty Draconian. If a vessel is found floating around in the water capsized that does not have a decal it is seized by the state and sold to help recoup the cost of the SAR that was launched.
I would not make this something the MP could stop and check for a decal, but if there were a reason to stop a boat like this, the owner would be told to get a decal, then if he/she didn't within a certain period of time the vessel could be seized. Like I said, pretty Draconian but it would ensure compliance.
Just my $.02