Best advice I got when getting my license. It’s a piece of paper. It all depends on what you do with it. Getting the first job can be the hardest part. Lots of times to work on inspected boats one needs to take a crew job and be the hardest worker with the hope that the captain will teach you how to operate the boat. It’s hard now days to find captains that know the boats systems from the keel up. If the boat has twins one should be able to get it parked with one down. It’s all about keeping the proper level of paranoia because things always go wrong at the worst time.
I’ve heard in some cases your insurance could increase with a Capt license. The reason is with the license you have the “opportunity” to be for hire, which carries a larger liability.
6 pack means 6 passengers only. You can drive a bigger boat but you can only have 6 paying passengers. I have a 100 Ton so I can take as many as the boat can hold at a time. We have one boat that can have 22 passengers and one that can take 37 passengers.
Professional mariner here. SUNY maritime grad and tug captain. Having a license and working as a captain are two entirely different things. There are a lot of hacks out there that have licenses that are faking it. We call them paper captains. Many of them falsified their seatime. It's been my experience that civilians like insurance and even companies that own boats have no idea about the licensing structure in the US. I receive solicitations for jobs every day where the license requirement is erroneous, I mean not even applicable to the vessel. Back when I was a young pup, I had a gig at a yacht club driving the launch. I used to practice docking and undocking the launch in the middle of the night when nobody was around. I did not stop until I had it mastered. I do not recommend that anyone get a license unless they plan on using it to earn income. It's a big expense in money and time. Much of the training is not relevant to people that are operating their own boats. A reputable safety class and actual hands on training docking and manuevering the boat is better training.
I agree and even for me starting out very late in life I could never compete all of the classes to keep going up. After you learn how to drive a boat there is still lots of learning to do.
@@donnobles5272 For a regular boat owner on his own boat no, it's the same amount of liability. However if you are operating a boat you own or someone else's under the authority of your license, meaning you have passengers and you are being paid, then a whole different set of rules applies. If you are negligent, and kill someone you could do prison time. Two examples are the tug mate that ran over the duck boat passengers, and the captain of the dive boat in Hawaii. These examples are rare and extreme.
