Quote:
Originally Posted by Bear Islander
...I don't know if spitting toothpaste into the lake is legal or not (where is Skip when we need him). My question is... if her spit goes in the lake... what is she doing with her urine?...
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Sorry, I still have my day job and as some of you may know, I have started a new "side" business, so I'm kinda burning the candle at both ends right now so I can afford oil for this winter!
Anyway, a couple of quick points:
As BI has pointed out, you cannot lease or sell your mooring permit to a third party. You can allow a guest to stay on your mooring...but if it's an overnight junket on a houseboat YOU MUST notify the Department of Environmental Services. This is the Agency that you would take your complaint to in reference to the activity noted above. Don't you just love New Hampshire law?
And frankly, what difference does it make if you spend 8 to 10 hours on the water at night, or do so during the day? Where do we think all the daytrippers without heads are doing their stuff?
I have a lot of respect for the LT, but did get a good chuckle out of his e-mail.
Some of you good folks are starting to catch on to how convoluted the law making process is in this State. The strange twists and turns that HB847 took are but a good example.
Let's talk frankly about the overnight anchor/mooring law.
This law was implemented several decades ago when the Lake was much less congested and times a little simpler. It had a specific purpose, to prevent people from launching and living on the inland waters in toilet/bed equipped houseboats unregulated, a problem that was slowly creeping across the country.
The law specifically targeted legally defined "houseboats".
In the early 90s it was clearly recognized by the State that the verbiage did not include all watercraft, but a specific and narrowly defined class. It 1993 the Senate, recognizing the loophole, attempted to ammend the law to include all watercraft. After leaving the Senate the bill was ITL'd, and the subject quietly dropped.
Fast forward a decade or so, and now you have a much more crowded lake with much larger boats, easier to spend the night on. But here's the rub. No one dares bring the issue forward again for two reasons. The initial publicity could cause a multitude of problems when media coverage reveals to the masses that the law only covers a specific type of craft. Additionally, what happens if the ammendment fails again, this time with a much larger potential audience of overnight water campers playing close attention?
No one wants that headache, so it is easier to play word games and puposely cause confusion over the issue.
The sad part of all this?
The belief by some that if someone in a boatload of fishermen falls asleep, the operator can be cited for "overnight anchoring".
The absurd that you can't boat at night with one or more of your passengers taking a snooze.
What bothers me about this particular faulty statute is that the State persists in creating a myth in the belief that most people will act like sheep, and blindly not question the regulation.
And the saddest part is that they are right, in this particular instance.
In closing, I have said it before and will repeat it again, I think that the law should be simply ammended to include all watercraft. The fact that the folks in position to make this happen won't is a sad statement on how convoluted politics have become in my State.
Off the soapbox, it's time to brush my teeth and go to bed....I promise not to spit into my neighbor's yard!
