Quote:
Originally Posted by shore things
It has repeated been pointed out that the boating certificate only certifies that you know the rules; you don't actually have to know how to drive a boat. Is there any place locally that actually offers piloting lessons? Is there any incentive for taking such a course? Perhaps a break on your insurance? We are actually getting requests these days for bigger stronger docks where the applicants say the need for the stronger dock is that inexperienced boaters (or older relatives with slower reflexes) continuously damage the regulaur existing structures because they don't know how to dock and run into them. This is a rather disturbing bit of reasoning and it would be great if we could refer people to some form of boat piloting class so that their docks will survive a bit longer because the Department is not going to start accepting boater inability as justification for "beefier" docks.
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I agree, it is a "disturbing bit of reasoning". Are the docks that feeble, or is the damage getting to be unavoidable due to poor seamanship?
Regardless, I think Weirs Beach Boater was posting about such a boating class in a thread this summer. I've always thought it was a great idea to have on-water instruction, just as Driver's Ed is mandatory. Or, we could just ignore the number of boaters with little to no skill, and build stronger docks and put rubber bumpers on rocks, and inflatable bubbles around all boats.
Yes, JRC, if people really are doing that much damage to docks, what the heck would you do? I wouldn't accept "boater inability" as a reason either. Boating classes make far more sense that the silly little certificate. Of all the information packed into that little whiz quiz, about 95% is ignored on the water anyway.