NH Native...
Boats are a completely different animal than ATV's. You pay a non-resident fee in maine because ATV's are not regulated at the federal level. Boats are! Not so many years ago, you could ride your snowmobile between NH, VT and ME without having to register your sled in each state. There was a reciprocal agreement between the 3 states that honored the registration from the home state as valid. I am not sure if MA was part of the reciprocal agreement or not. Maine was the first to break the deal and now they have all done away with that completely, and as such tourism has suffered.
Anyway, your missing the point of my proposal...
First off, there is only one state in the union that requires a boat license, thats Alabama. Its still an experiment at this point and the jury is still out on how well it works. It seems to be working quite well, but it also adds another thick layer of bureaucracy to the government that will need to be paid for, sucking up funds and resources from where the money is needed most. Its unclear to me as how or if there is any reciprocity between Alabama and any other states. They do however list that you can take the course online...
Anyway, back to my point. Even if you require a boating license, there is no way to tell if in fact the person driving the boat actually has one. If you read my proposal thouroughly you would see that I included a provision that made the owner of the boat liable for the actions of anyone else who drove the boat.
So your right, if the the owner gets his sticker, the MP's would assume the guy driving the boat was the owner and has succesfully completed Boater Ed... for arguments sake, lets say the driver was not the owner and had no formal boater education and he pulls some bonehead move. The MP's witness this move and pull the guy over. Now the guy driving gets a ticket for not having his boater ed cert, and the boat owner gets a ticket for letting an uneducated boater drive his boat. It won't take people long to get the message that we take boater education seriously. I am not too sure we want to tag the ticket to someones drivers license, but certainly we can tag it to thier safe boater certificate.. 1st offense $100 fine, 2nd offense within 1 year period $250 fine and completion of a classroom safe boater course, 3rd offense within 1 year period $500 fine and 6 months loss of boating privileges.
Right now, anyone from anywhere in the US can splash their boat on Lake Winni and go for a cruise. This is because of reciprocity. They are by NH law required to have the safe boater certificate if they fall within the appropriate age, but there is no way to tell. With my proposal, every boat on the lake will have a visual identifier that tells the MP (and other boaters) that they have been at least educated minimally. There will be more MP because they will be funded for Lake Winni by the people who use Lake Winni.
The law of the seas has been around alot longer than this country. The numbers on your boat are not just state registration numbers, they are U.S. Coast Guard numbers, identifying your boat as a U.S. flagged vessel. As such you can bring your boat to just about any waterway in the country. Just like you can drive your car in any state. You are required to obey the rules of the state you are visiting. But nowhere on any public boat launch that I have seen on Lake Winnipesaukee is it posted that Boater Education is a requirement for boating in this state. Alot of good people just don't know some of the different laws we have here in NH.
Woodsy
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