All clear USCG rules for foreign vessels.
B16
All down In Memorium Of a deckhand. Vol.6, No. 7
www.the-triton.com
A4
Dive shops, training expand.
A12 October 2009
It will take time for lost wealth to return to yachting By Capt. Douglas Meier As I read the August Triton, as I do every month, I sat back and thought, don’t yacht crew get it? Don’t they know what state the yachting industry is really in? Well, get ready for some bad news. It’s bad. There, I said it. Will it get better? Of course it will, but don’t count on the run we had over
the past few years to return anytime soon. Even if the economy bounces back in the next 12 months, the lost wealth needs to be built up again before the large checks are flowing through our industry again. In other words, I think a lot of crew think of this as a temporary slow period when it is, in fact, an industry contraction. And this contraction will create
competition for each open job onboard and competition at the interview that will lower wages. That’s a fact. A month ago I posted an ad on a popular Web-based job board and in two hours I had 27 resumés in front of me; in two days, more than 70. To put this in prospective, a year ago filling the same position I waited days to see if the person I wanted would agree to the job, and then wait to see if they showed up.
The crew of the 134-foot M/Y Silver Cloud takes in the sights at Itsukushima Shrine, Miya Jima, near Hiroshima. The gate marks the entrance to the shrine, which appears to be floating on the water at high tide. Experience Japan PHOTO/FIRST OFFICER MICHAEL JENSEN through Capt. Nigel Beatty’s story, beginning on B1.
If you hold a captain’s license, which one? U.S. Coast Guard licenses dominated the seascape in this month’s survey. Find out what role nationality and convenience played in the captains’ decisions on which license to get, as well as how many owners support captains’ licensing efforts, how many captains let their licenses expire and more.
Story on licensing, C1
See LESSON, page A14
Obtaining your license is part of the job
JAPAN – GATEWAY TO ASIA
TRITON SURVEY: Licensing
Ok, what to do now? Well, I wouldn’t hang up your foul weather gear just yet. Like everything else in life we need to adjust to the new rules, the new playing field, and the new yachting norm, at least until the next big money wave comes our way. What is the new yachting norm? For the time being it looks like a lot of
MCA 500 ton – 2% Other RYA/IYT – 6.6% 200 ton – MCA 7.8% < 3000 ton (Class 4) – 9% USCG 500 ton – 9.8% USCG 200 ton – 10.2%
USCG 1600 ton – 27.7%
USCG 100 ton – 27%
Obtaining and maintaining a license is just part of life as a yacht captain, agreed the captains gathered on both sides of the Atlantic for our monthly From the Bridge luncheon. As in our survey this month [see story and stats beginning on page C1], these captains From the Bridge acknowledged Lucy Chabot Reed that, sure, no law and Mike Price requires the skipper to have a license to drive a private recreational vessel. But they also said any captain would find it much harder to land a job without one. “You physically don’t need one, but you are going to have a big problem finding a job because of all the insurance regulations,” a Ft. Lauderdale captain said. “Insurance companies are the ones driving the industry now,” another said. As always, individual comments are not attributed to any one person in particular so as to encourage frank and open discussion. The attending captains are identified in photographs on page A16. The captains in the Med noted that even though insurance companies make the call on what license is required on a particular boat, they will lower their guideline expectations if a captain has a lot of experience or local knowledge, and no claims history. The captains in Ft. Lauderdale had
See BRIDGE, page A16