On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 12:27:58 GMT, "Doug Kanter"
wrote:
I need to whine a little.
The floor is yours - whine away.
Yesterday, I was returning from fishing on Lake Ontario in my 14' nookular
powered aluminum yacht. It was a typical Sunday on Irondequoit Bay: Large
boats driven by nitwits were travelling at top speed through clearly marked
no-wake zones, throwing enormous wakes down the aisles of docked boats at
the marina near the inlet, and making it dicey for boats at the nearby
launch.
Sounds like Narragansett Bay East Passage on any day you choose to
name.
In the midst of all this madness, I was spotted by the Coast Guard and
deemed to be a clear threat to homeland security.
I suspect it may have been more situational rather than being a clear
threat to Homeland Security. However, I wasn't there, so I can't
judge. And you are a pretty straight forward guy, so I'll take your
interpretation of events as gospel. ;)
I was pulled over for a safety check.
Where you wearing a turban by any chance - have a beard - taking
pictures - anything? :)
I was cited for not having my registration, a distress flag
and a fire extinguisher. They were correct on the first two issues, but
based on their own rules and those of NY State, I'm not required to have a
fire extinguisher. Actually, I bought one when I first got the boat, but
found that there wasn't a good place to mount the thing except for right
next to the (portable) gas tank, which didn't make much sense considering
how the probability is close to 100% that a fire would start there.
Hmmmm - I must read on.
I have 7 days to have a boarding officer look at the boat again, or pay a
fine and forfeit my son and my lawnmower. This inspection will be based on
opinion and interpretation, so I'm looking for votes from the peanut
gallery, even though this may be a futile effort. The boat has 3 aluminum
bench seats which do NOT have storage underneath. They're sealed and filled
with floatation material. There are no storage lockers of any kind, and the
hull is one layer - no bilge, no floor of any kind.
NY State says I'm exempt from the extinguisher requirement:
- Outboards less than 26' and of open construction
The Coast Guard's site says I must have an extinguisher if any of these
conditions are met:
a.. Inboard engines are installed.
b.. There are closed compartments and compartments under seats where
portable fuel tanks may be stored.
c.. There are double bottoms not sealed to the hull or which are not
completely filled with flotation materials.
d.. There are closed living spaces.
e.. There are closed stowage compartments in which combustible or
flammable materials are stored.
f.. There are permanently installed fuel tanks. (Fuel tanks secured so
they cannot be moved in case of fire or other emergency are considered
permanently installed. There are no gallon capacity limits to determine if a
fuel tank is portable. If the weight of a fuel tank is such that persons on
board cannot move it, the Coast Guard considers it permanently installed.)
Help me waste my time arguing with the Coast Guard. :-) That last rule
sounds silly for my situation. First of all, I can left my 6 gallon tank
with my toe. But, even so, if the engine/tank area (aft of the rear bench
seat) went up in flames, how likely is it that I'd try to lift the tank and
throw it overboard??? Excluding that, the most likely fire hazard I can
imagine is if a salmon made a fast run and my reel built up a lot of heat.
I'm done whining.
Ok, having been through this twice, I can expound on what you could do
and then what you should do.
You could use the above as an argument in your favour. You could call
the MSO for the area, talk to the OIC (or NCOIC) and explain what
happened and how your situation does not fit the requirements for
on-board fire extinguishers. You could take this all the way to the
Commanding Officer of the District in which you were cited for failure
to have proper equipment. You could take it even further because the
rules are clearly in your favour. You could take it as far as you
could go in the USCG chain of command only to find, in the end, that
it's all up to the original Boarding Officer who you have just
embarrassed, forced him/her to do a bunch of paperwork and mightly
****ed off.
Or.........
You could get a fire extinguisher, put it on the boat and just return
to your life sans fines.
Your call. :)
It's all in how the rules are interpreted. There are standard
rule/regulation/policy interpretations that most Boarding Officers
use, however, if they deem it necessary, they can ignore those and say
that in their opinion, this, this and this is necessary. The regular
boater type folk do not have the political or economic horsepower to
change the results like a commercial outfit would.
I understand your angst.
Later,
Tom
-----------
"Angling may be said to be so
like the mathematics that it
can never be fully learnt..."
Izaak Walton "The Compleat Angler", 1653
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