NOYB wrote:
I just sent the check to the surveyor yesterday. Survey is being done on
Friday. I'm looking at the boat on Saturday. The official survey won't be
sent to me until Monday or Tuesday, but the surveyor said that he'd give me
a verbal thumbs up or down by Saturday.

By Saturday at noon, I could be burning $350 worth of gas travelling on the
boat en route to Naples from the seller's marina near Tampa.

I've been boating for over 20 years, buy have never owned a twin screw boat
this size (31' LOA...10'7" beam). It should be a learning experience.

The loan company says that the boat must be CG documented. What are the
rules/requirements for CG documentation? And what's the purpose of it?


The CG document is a certificate of ownership.

In some ways, it is like a "title" that you could get from your state
government, but the CG document trumps state titles (and in fact,
states are prohibited from issuing titles to boats with a CG document).
The document will list the HIN, the builder, the owner (you), and the
leinholder (the loan company).

Your lender prefers a document to a state title because it is a lot
easier to repo the boat if you stop making payments and decide to hide
out in Alabam or Louisiana to avoid your creditors :-)

Most states still require that you *register* the boat and pay any
associated sales or use tax, even though your boat will be "documented"
rather than titled. The regulation that prevents states from issuing
titles to documented boats does not prohibit states from requiring a
registration. However, you can not display state registration numbers
on your hull if you are documented.

There is some chance you may be boating in a foreign country, such as
the Bahamas (?),
and you will have some itsy bitsy little teeny bit better security in
the ownership of your boat with a certificate of ownership backed up by
the US Government than one backed up by the State of _________.