Boats

You have to have a captains license. That in it's self is quite involved. I'm not sure all of the requirements, but it takes about a year ( it's in hours ) as 1st mate before you can get the first license. That I believe lets you carry 6 people. Then it take many more hours of that before you can get the next step.

The requirement is 360 days underway to get your 6-pak license and 720 days underway to get your Master's license. There are additional requirements for how many of those days have to be off-shore and how many can be near-coastal or inland. You have to be able to document your sea time.

If you are already a licensed captain, you sure save a lot of time. With the 6-pak license, you don't have to get the boat certified by the Coast Guard to be able to take up to 6 paying passengers at a time. To take more than 6 paying passengers, you have to have a boat that has met some serious (and expensive) Coast Guard requirements and not all boats have the potential to achieve that status no matter how much money you throw at them. Your first step is to make sure the keel was laid in the USA.

To get a business license, you go through the USVI Department of Licensing just like for any other business. You usually have to be a resident of the USVI for at least 30 days prior to submitting your application and there is a variety of paperwork you must submit in addition to the application form and fees. To do any chartering in the BVI's, you have some additional STCW course requirements and certifications you must have in addition to your basic Captain's licenses to get permits to operate in BVI waters.

To be allowed to take charter passengers into any of the national park areas (such as Buck Island on St. Croix), you have to hold a permit issued through the Parks Department (and it also might be through DPNR, I'm not positive. It's the parks department that enforces the permit requirement.) There are a very small number of such permits issued and there are existing businesses that have been waiting for years without being granted one. You can take charter passengers off-shore or to other snorkeling locations outside the park areas and not necessarily be required to have a special permit to do so. Check with the Parks Department and DPNR for specific information for locations of interest to you. You need to have a DPNR-issued anchoring permit to anchor in some areas. If you expect to serve food or alcohol on your charters, you will also need to check into food handling permits and liquor licenses, etc. There's always one more agency you forgot to talk to who will come breathing down your neck!

Yes, people bring boats to the islands. Some are sailed down, others come in large ships that specifically transport boats, and others come on their trailers on barges. It really depends on their type, size, and ability to handle open water crossings. Most boat-based businesses cater to 6 paying passengers or less to avoid the additional Coast Guard requirements. If you are hoping to bring down something like a large catamaran to get into the snorkel trip excursion business to cater to cruise ship passengers and other tourists, you will have your work cut out for you. Be sure to do a LOT of homework before buying a boat for that purpose or before investing in relocating it to the islands. My husband and I brought our 65' sailboat safely to St. Croix from Washington State via the Panama Canal last fall after several years of planning the journey. It's being prepped for 6-pak luxury charter service for the future. Don't expect anything to move quickly when you get your boat to the islands. You aren't likely to be up and running and making a profit in a hurry. Factor some extra island time delays into your budget and business plan!

WOW! That's a lot of info to digest. Thank you for the help.

If you already have the boat and it's in a state that is charter-able....you can always hire a captain as an independent contractor on an as-needed basis until you get your own captain's license. You can take the captain's license course - it's about 10 days long - and then sit for the exam. You don't need to prove your sea time hours to take the course or the exam, but you do need that in order to be handed the license. If you own your own boat and your sea time comes from that, you can document your own time and not have to have anyone else sign off on it. In other words, if you've got the hours from your own boat, you don't have to crew on another just to get the hours documented for the USCG. Your sea time needs to be in the same category as the license you are seeking. In other words, a thousand hours of inland water experience won't cut it for a near coastal or off shore license.

Be prepared...the exam is tough because you need to know all that stuff you'll never use such as how cargo ships are constructed and what the compartments are for. There is lot you'll need to know just for the test and then you'll never encounter it again. It can be very intense.

If you bareboat charter your boat, you can have 12 passengers without being inspected. The captain can then be hired independent from the chartering of the boat. So, it's two contracts for the charterer to make that happen. That's how a lot of the day charters get around the six pack thing without becoming an inspected passenger vessel. It's very common here in Miami.

I can tell you that to become an inspected passenger vessel you will spend WAY TOO MUCH MONEY getting there (and could potentially spend $100,000 on that project) and you may not like your boat when it's done. I have one of those - she was an inspected/certified vessel when I bought her. We let the certification expire and have begun un-doing some of it. The engine rooms, for example, had been lined with 4" of rockwook and then covered up with aluminum panels which also covered up many items that needed to be accessed for maintenance, like the clamps on the shaft hoses. There was no way to get to this stuff without some major destruction. And when you take away 4 inches from every amount of space around the engines, you lose a lot of space to work on the engines. We are a six pack now and that's plenty. More than six overnight guests, plus crew, is just too many for me. 🙂

And then there's the nightmare of getting insurance.......that's been the hardest thing we've had to do. Took over 7 months just to find an insurer willing to write a policy for a boat in Miami. I imagine it can be just as difficult in the islands since it's still in the hurricane zone.

I though that it was 6 passengers ("6 pack") for uninspected boats...

For vessels under 100 gross tons, no inspection is necessary for a charter WITH CREW carrying no more than six passengers for hire, or a chartered bareboat yacht carrying no more than 12 passengers. The difference is whether it is a crewed charter or a bareboat charter. A crewed charter is considered to be carrying passengers for hire. A bareboat charter is where the boat is essentially "sold" to one charterer who can then either operate the boat on his own with a maximum of 12 passengers or hire a captain. The 12 passenger threshold applies when such vessels are chartered without the crew provided or specified by the owner. Title 46 CFR.

Please beware the "bareboat" 12 passenger rule. If you are the owner of the vessel and are hired as crew it negates the 12 passenger ruling in the CFR. If boarded you are considered in violation of this ruling.

Also, an interesting side note is that if the vessel does not have a motor it is exempt from Coast Guard regulations.

Pamela