Look the thing all of us most want to avoid is anything that gives
land lubber bureaucrats reasons to put guys in uniforms out on the
water with occasional quotas of a certain number of boaters to pull
over to "show the flag", "the system is working", etc. Having your
afternoon interrupted by the Coast Guard is bad enough but, at least
they are minimally trained and almost always professional to a fault.

Do you really want someone besides the Coast Guard driving around with
binoculars looking up your boat name and registration numbers and
typing them into a laptop to decide if they should waste a half hour
of your afternoon?

I should mention BTW that I am a Harbormaster. I don't want this kind
of thing added to my duties any more than I want to be the object of
it when I'm boating somewhere else.

--

Roger Long



"Dave" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 06 Apr 2006 10:29:57 GMT, "Roger Long"
said:

Besides, how do you suspend a right with out a license to
take away? Do you issue a piece of paper that says the person is
not
permitted to operate a vessel? Do the boating police then board and
say, "We want to check if you have an operation suspension
certificate, please show it to us?"

Simple. When the person is convicted of, say, drunk boating, the
sentence
may include suspension of his right to operate a boat. If he's
stopped
again, the boating police or CG calls in to check whether he's been
suspended. If he has, he's charged with operating while his right to
operate
was suspended--just as if he had that little piece of plastic and it
was
taken away from him.