Charter Boats Take Note

Our Gulf Coast Correspondent, Capt. Mike Holmes informs us that word has filtered to the Texas coast that the Coast Guard may start enforcing a little known section of a Federal Regulation regarding maritime accidents (Title 46-Shipping, Part 4) enacted in June 2006 that requires everyone operating a boat for hire–six packs included–to carry an alcohol swab test kit for use in case of a Serious Marine Incident. According to law, testing of crew involved in an incident must take place within two hours, thus only boats that could be expected to be back to a shore facility for testing within two hours of an incident are exempt from carrying the kits, which cost around $115 and have a shelf life of 12-18 months.

Marlow’s Shining Example

If you’ve ever cringed at the amount of teak it takes to glamorize all those yachts at a boat show, you are not alone. Builder David Marlow, in partnership with the Norseman Shipyard in Xiamen, China, is growing teak and other timber species in effort to mitigate the yard’s usage of hardwoods in the production of their yachts. Ultimately replacing trees in a three-to-one ratio, to date Marlow-Norseman has planted more than 10,000 trees, including apple, lychee and pear, whose fruits are harvested for the shipyard kitchen.

Good News...More Docks

We are heartened to hear of new marina properties springing up at both ends of our geographic range. Cumberland Yacht Harbor, a $250 million waterfront community and marina, is under construction on the Cumberland River just 10 minutes from Riverfront Park in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. The Nashville Yacht Club, one of the oldest clubs in the state, intends to use Cumberland Yacht Harbor’s marina as its permanent home. And in Miami, Florida, 400 Sunny Isles is taking the soup-to-nuts approach, breaking ground on a development that includes condos, a marina, dry storage and even fractional yacht ownership opportunities.

Bad Boat?

If your boat is so ugly or unreliable you are thinking of putting it out to pasture, the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators (NASBLA) says “not so fast.” This group has a grant from the Coast Guard to develop a base of forensic information from staging a series of two-vessel collisions this September in Virginia. If you have a trailerable, operational boat you would like to turn into a tax write-off, contact the NASBLA at (859) 225-9487, or e-mail info@nasbla.org. Watercraft from PWCs to small cabin cruisers are on the wish list. After the crashes, the remains will be taken to the National Transportation Safety Board’s Training Academy for study.

Eight Bells

Southern Boating and the marine industry as a whole lost a friend with the passing of Philip “Flip” Thompson in April. Flip–his name was usually followed by the phrase, “the paint guy”had forgotten more about the yacht business than most of us will ever know. A superb marketer, he started his career with International Paint and then in 1975 moved to Awlgrip Yacht Coatings, where he quickly made it the top-selling brand in Florida. Soon he was in charge of marketing Awlgrip worldwide and moved to Europe in 1985 to expand that market. Since 2002, “Baron Awlgrip” had been a marine consultant, most recently for Underwater Lights USA.