Having recently purchased a boat in Georgia and being just about ready to sail her to Bermuda for use as a liveaboard I am in a quandry as to where to register the boat. I am a US citizen and will only be in Bermuda for a few more years. Do I have to register in the US? What are the benefits of doing so. I will end up paying large duty in Bermuda so why not make her home port Bermuda? As a matter of fact I don't even know how to register in the States. Can someone enlighten me? Please send replies to tenastu@aol.com with the subject "for Robb"
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Phil
Boat registration laws vary by state
I suspect it depends on the locale where you are. If your boat will one state or country for more than six months, it will have to be registered there. Here is a link for registration requirements by state: http://www.boats.com/content/boat_registration.jsp Phil S/V Catmandu PS, I am sending this to you by email, too.
I suspect it depends on the locale where you are. If your boat will one state or country for more than six months, it will have to be registered there. Here is a link for registration requirements by state: http://www.boats.com/content/boat_registration.jsp Phil S/V Catmandu PS, I am sending this to you by email, too.
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Ron
Registration
I just went through all this with my Catalina 320, the "Lady Jane". If you want U.S. registration & plan to sail outside the U.S. territorial waters then you must do a Federal Documention of your boat through the U.S. Coast Guard. Doing so usually pre-empts any State documentation & registration laws. Contact the U.S. Coast Guard regional office for info, or log onto their website. I downloaded all the forms & instructions, filled them out, sent them in (with checks for the documentation (~$134) and filing of the bill-of-sale (~$8.00). There is an annual renewal required, but its not as expensive as the initial documentation. Or, you can hire one of the documentation services who spend 15 minutes filling out your forms, charge you $100, and send in the forms (with your two checks) for you. Be advised that if you sail into the territorial waters of another country on a U.S. flagged vessel, that vessel must have an FCC station licence for the electronic emitters (VHF, SSB, RADAR, etc) as well. And, the operators must have operator permits. The USCG website has a link to the FCC website where you can download the necessary forms & instructions, too. Once the boat is documented, you must put the name on the outer hull, port & starboard, and the hailing port on the stern. And, the USCG Documentation number must be applied to the inner hull. There are no major restrictions on the boat name, and the "hailing port" can be anywhere -- doesn't even have to be a waterside place! Here in Massachusetts, however you must (a) still pay the state sales tax, and (b) pay an excise tax to the town where the boat is principly moored or docked. Also, the state requires the motor-driven dinghy to be registered, and a number affixed on the hull. The dinghy is not included in the USCG documentation. Better check into the legalities & tax rules regarding foreign-flagging a vessel. It may not be as good a deal as it might look at first. Hope that helps. --Ron (s/v Lady Jane, Marblehead, MA)
I just went through all this with my Catalina 320, the "Lady Jane". If you want U.S. registration & plan to sail outside the U.S. territorial waters then you must do a Federal Documention of your boat through the U.S. Coast Guard. Doing so usually pre-empts any State documentation & registration laws. Contact the U.S. Coast Guard regional office for info, or log onto their website. I downloaded all the forms & instructions, filled them out, sent them in (with checks for the documentation (~$134) and filing of the bill-of-sale (~$8.00). There is an annual renewal required, but its not as expensive as the initial documentation. Or, you can hire one of the documentation services who spend 15 minutes filling out your forms, charge you $100, and send in the forms (with your two checks) for you. Be advised that if you sail into the territorial waters of another country on a U.S. flagged vessel, that vessel must have an FCC station licence for the electronic emitters (VHF, SSB, RADAR, etc) as well. And, the operators must have operator permits. The USCG website has a link to the FCC website where you can download the necessary forms & instructions, too. Once the boat is documented, you must put the name on the outer hull, port & starboard, and the hailing port on the stern. And, the USCG Documentation number must be applied to the inner hull. There are no major restrictions on the boat name, and the "hailing port" can be anywhere -- doesn't even have to be a waterside place! Here in Massachusetts, however you must (a) still pay the state sales tax, and (b) pay an excise tax to the town where the boat is principly moored or docked. Also, the state requires the motor-driven dinghy to be registered, and a number affixed on the hull. The dinghy is not included in the USCG documentation. Better check into the legalities & tax rules regarding foreign-flagging a vessel. It may not be as good a deal as it might look at first. Hope that helps. --Ron (s/v Lady Jane, Marblehead, MA)
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Debra Blatnik
Coast Guard Documentation Rules
There are also special issues if the boat has been documented in the past. (You will need to remove from documentation). The National Vessel Documentation Center can answer you questions.
There are also special issues if the boat has been documented in the past. (You will need to remove from documentation). The National Vessel Documentation Center can answer you questions.
The documentation one-two-three.
Based on what I recall there seem to be several points concerning Federal documentation which have not yet been mentioned here. One of them is the actual size of the boat. Documentation measures the GROSS available tonnage of the boat-- that means they want to know FULL hull volume UP TO THE GUNNEL-- as if anyone would sail like that! --but I suppose in theory it IS possible a vessel could still float loaded that far. There is a certain limit to how small a boat will qualify-- it goes by this fully-loaded displacement. I don't remember where the cut-off is but our 1974 Hunter 25 was NOT eligible. The sticky part here is that it needs a Master Carpenter's Cerificate which includes this 'full' displacement as calculated by the designer or builder. I don't know many of us who can provide this figure on their own. But for most production boats the 'type' is already established and so if one boat has every been documented the rest may not have to go through the trouble. As one-time shop go-fer and office ogre at Cherubini Boat I often filed the necessary paperwork, at the buyers' request, to set up a Delaware corporation which would 'own' the boat, register the bill of sale in Wilmington, and then effect Federal documentation as well (for which the owners would gladly tip me $50 which back then was good money for a 21-year-old). This was a good way to go and not at all 'phony' or 'grey-area' ownership-- it is how major ships are owned and registered too. At last I heard the annual fee was $70 for the corporation and nothing for the boat. Be careful when you die, though-- and never mind the boat itself-- as sole owner of the corporation you had better have express disposition of the corporation spelt out in your will or you will have the problem we had when my dad died and they insisted on reports of the corporation's assets for 7 years after the boat as sold. There are other issues, bad and good, about Federal documentation. One is that the boat carries no stupid stick-on numbers at the bow. The boat is theoretically known forever by her documentated name (so make sure it's a good one!). It is very awkward to change the name. The docu numbers must be ENGRAVED into the 'main beam' of the boat-- this has to be a PERMANENT part of the boat which theoretically can never be changed or altered without rebuilding the entire hull. At Cherubini and Raider we epoxied the plank to the cabin bulkhead which supported the mast (some guys got the numbers gold-leafed for a goof). Also the Federal government may not recognise every owners' home port-- it must be a REAL port such as Camden or Philadelphia or Wilmington, since it will be known round the world as home to that port city. Kind of hard to defend 'Cherry Hill, NJ' as the home port of a seagoing vessel. I am no lawyer and may be incomplete or even outdated here, but the very nice people at the Corporation Corporation in Wilmington and also any maritime-law experts out there are better contacts. JC
Based on what I recall there seem to be several points concerning Federal documentation which have not yet been mentioned here. One of them is the actual size of the boat. Documentation measures the GROSS available tonnage of the boat-- that means they want to know FULL hull volume UP TO THE GUNNEL-- as if anyone would sail like that! --but I suppose in theory it IS possible a vessel could still float loaded that far. There is a certain limit to how small a boat will qualify-- it goes by this fully-loaded displacement. I don't remember where the cut-off is but our 1974 Hunter 25 was NOT eligible. The sticky part here is that it needs a Master Carpenter's Cerificate which includes this 'full' displacement as calculated by the designer or builder. I don't know many of us who can provide this figure on their own. But for most production boats the 'type' is already established and so if one boat has every been documented the rest may not have to go through the trouble. As one-time shop go-fer and office ogre at Cherubini Boat I often filed the necessary paperwork, at the buyers' request, to set up a Delaware corporation which would 'own' the boat, register the bill of sale in Wilmington, and then effect Federal documentation as well (for which the owners would gladly tip me $50 which back then was good money for a 21-year-old). This was a good way to go and not at all 'phony' or 'grey-area' ownership-- it is how major ships are owned and registered too. At last I heard the annual fee was $70 for the corporation and nothing for the boat. Be careful when you die, though-- and never mind the boat itself-- as sole owner of the corporation you had better have express disposition of the corporation spelt out in your will or you will have the problem we had when my dad died and they insisted on reports of the corporation's assets for 7 years after the boat as sold. There are other issues, bad and good, about Federal documentation. One is that the boat carries no stupid stick-on numbers at the bow. The boat is theoretically known forever by her documentated name (so make sure it's a good one!). It is very awkward to change the name. The docu numbers must be ENGRAVED into the 'main beam' of the boat-- this has to be a PERMANENT part of the boat which theoretically can never be changed or altered without rebuilding the entire hull. At Cherubini and Raider we epoxied the plank to the cabin bulkhead which supported the mast (some guys got the numbers gold-leafed for a goof). Also the Federal government may not recognise every owners' home port-- it must be a REAL port such as Camden or Philadelphia or Wilmington, since it will be known round the world as home to that port city. Kind of hard to defend 'Cherry Hill, NJ' as the home port of a seagoing vessel. I am no lawyer and may be incomplete or even outdated here, but the very nice people at the Corporation Corporation in Wilmington and also any maritime-law experts out there are better contacts. JC
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Peggie Hall/Head Mistress
The REAL meanings of "tonnage"
Tonnage is a term that evolved from a measure of how much wine a vessel can carry. The word 'tun' was originally a size of a cask used to ship wine from Spain & Portugal to England. In 1347 a tax of 3 shillings per tun was imposed and this was called 'tonnage'. A ship's size became known by the number of casks it could carry, and the word tonnage started being used to describe a ship's size. It was found that if you took the length x the breadth x the depth of the hold under the deck and divided by 100 it was close to the number of casks. That is where we get the "Measurement ton" of 100 cubic feet per ton. There are seven definitions of tonnage: The first two are used by the tax collector. The next two are used by designers. The fifth and sixth are used by freight salesmen and canal operators and the last one is used by the USCG for documenting boats. Gross Tonnage - is the internal volume in cubic feet of the vessel minus certain spaces above the main or tonnage deck like stacks and ventilators which are called "exemptions" . Net Registered Tonnage - is obtained by deducting from the gross tonnage the volume of space that can't be used for paying cargo or passengers, that is to say the space occupied by the engines, the crew's quarter, the stores, etc. Displacement Tonnage - is the actual weight of the water "displaced" by the ship and is usually quoted in long tons of 2240 lbs. Light Displacement Tonnage - is the weight with nothing in it. Loaded Displacement Tonnage - is the fully loaded weight to the maximum and is on her Summer draft in Salt Water.. Deadweight Tonnage - is the difference between Light and Loaded Displacement Tonnage....the Actual carrying capacity of the vessel. Panama & Suez Canal Tonnages - these are different from the international ones. There used to be a lot of variations between countries and they thought they were being conned, so they came up with their own for everyone. Simplified Measurement System - The USCG decided that all this was to much for the bureaucrats to deal with for yachts, so they came up with this formula: Take the horizontal distance between the outboard ends of the boat not including rudders and bow sprits. Multiply that by the maximum beam outside to outside. Multiply that by the distance from the sheer line not including bulwarks or cap rails to the outside bottom of the hull not including the keel. Add the volume of the deck house/cabin top. Multiply by .5 for sailboats and .67 for power boats. Divide by 100. This will give you the "Gross Tonnage". Net tonnage is 90% of gross for sailboats and 80% for power boats. Iow, "tonnage" as it relates to pleasure craft is totally meaningless...except in the mind of some government bureaucrat.
Tonnage is a term that evolved from a measure of how much wine a vessel can carry. The word 'tun' was originally a size of a cask used to ship wine from Spain & Portugal to England. In 1347 a tax of 3 shillings per tun was imposed and this was called 'tonnage'. A ship's size became known by the number of casks it could carry, and the word tonnage started being used to describe a ship's size. It was found that if you took the length x the breadth x the depth of the hold under the deck and divided by 100 it was close to the number of casks. That is where we get the "Measurement ton" of 100 cubic feet per ton. There are seven definitions of tonnage: The first two are used by the tax collector. The next two are used by designers. The fifth and sixth are used by freight salesmen and canal operators and the last one is used by the USCG for documenting boats. Gross Tonnage - is the internal volume in cubic feet of the vessel minus certain spaces above the main or tonnage deck like stacks and ventilators which are called "exemptions" . Net Registered Tonnage - is obtained by deducting from the gross tonnage the volume of space that can't be used for paying cargo or passengers, that is to say the space occupied by the engines, the crew's quarter, the stores, etc. Displacement Tonnage - is the actual weight of the water "displaced" by the ship and is usually quoted in long tons of 2240 lbs. Light Displacement Tonnage - is the weight with nothing in it. Loaded Displacement Tonnage - is the fully loaded weight to the maximum and is on her Summer draft in Salt Water.. Deadweight Tonnage - is the difference between Light and Loaded Displacement Tonnage....the Actual carrying capacity of the vessel. Panama & Suez Canal Tonnages - these are different from the international ones. There used to be a lot of variations between countries and they thought they were being conned, so they came up with their own for everyone. Simplified Measurement System - The USCG decided that all this was to much for the bureaucrats to deal with for yachts, so they came up with this formula: Take the horizontal distance between the outboard ends of the boat not including rudders and bow sprits. Multiply that by the maximum beam outside to outside. Multiply that by the distance from the sheer line not including bulwarks or cap rails to the outside bottom of the hull not including the keel. Add the volume of the deck house/cabin top. Multiply by .5 for sailboats and .67 for power boats. Divide by 100. This will give you the "Gross Tonnage". Net tonnage is 90% of gross for sailboats and 80% for power boats. Iow, "tonnage" as it relates to pleasure craft is totally meaningless...except in the mind of some government bureaucrat.
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