Wayne.B wrote:
On 15 May 2006 23:37:35 -0700, "
wrote:

You can accumulate an hour a day for a million days, and you won't have
qualifying sea time.

That's true but it will also make you at least 2,740 years old.

The fact is that many, many people who are serious boaters can
accumulate legitimate amounts of sea time without lying about it.

I agree that many can.

I know from observation that others simply lie, or count every time
they move the boat from its slip to the adjacent fuel dock and back as
a "day" of experience. One of the red flags that I overheard in the
seminar was the assurance that the instructors at the school (with a
vested interest in qualifying as many people as possible) would be
happy to "help" fill out the sea service form for interested
applicants.

Qualification requires 360 days of experience, (90 of those days must
be within the last 3 years) with a "day" being defined as no less than
a single 4-hour watch underway. Being underway for 8 hours doesn't
qualify for "two days" in a single 24-hour period. Swinging around the
anchor doesn't count, moored at the resort guest dock for three days
doesn't count for "three days", etc. My comment on engine hours is
based on the fact that in the extremely unlikely event that a boater
always ran for *exactly* four hours after starting the engine, the
minimum number of engine hours required to meet the requirement of 360
4-hour days would be 1,440. No way does any boater without previous
experience and anything less than 1440 hours on his first ever boat
qualify, at all, under even the most liberal interpretation of sea
service. Since a lot of boating runs will be less than 4-hours in
length and therefore not qualify at all and some will be longer than 4
hours but only count for a single "day", it would probably take most
people somewhere close to double that 1440 engine hour number to
actually, legitimately, meet the sea service requirement. For a lot of
casual boaters, that's almost 30 years of weekend and summer vacation
cruising.