While reading aus.sport.sailing, I noticed "Peter HK"
felt compelled to write:

"Ian George" wrote in message ...

I live in Queensland. I haven't read the regulations for years, but isn't
there something about the boat needing to be capable of planing?

Used to be the case but no longer


I was until now unaware that I needed one to operate my 10m sailboat. Are
you sure of this?

Ian

See http://www.msq.qld.gov.au/qt/msq.nsf/index/licensing

Our local yacht club highlighted this about 2 years ago so that everyone could go through the older simpler system before the change.

I have had a licence for years so either didn't hear or didn't notice
this change. In fact, before licensing was mandatory I got a
boatmaster under the voluntary system in NZ about 30years ago (upon
discovering that dinghy prowess around the bouys hadn't taught me
anything about docking, anchoring, bouyage or navigation or any one of
a hundred other trivial issues

I feel constrained to point out, however, that this new 'lifetme
licence' doesn't appear capable of stopping me at 100 yo and
technically blind from terrorising you in my 70 footer (assuming of
course that I make it to 100, lose my eyesight and my boat magically
doubles in size at some stage

But thanks for the info.

Cheers,
Ian