Rules for foreign flag vessels in US

Hi,

I can't get this link to load. Anyone else have this problem?

It looks like they changed their links around, try this:

http://www.marad.dot.gov/ships_ship...g/small_vessel_waiver/Small_Vessel_Waiver.htm

I don’t doubt that there are many qualified and capable Americans that I could hire as crew. I suppose that if I my expectations of a crew were to simply wash my boat and cook and serve my food then there really wouldn’t be any issue about hiring only American’s. However, I want more from my world-cruising experience and I hope to share a greater opportunity with my guests and my crew.

I grew up in an affluent community in California where most everyone I knew had a pool, a BMW and a view. California culture was and still is a huge national and international export. For me and most of my peers the height of multiculturalism was Cinco de Mayo day at school where local car clubs bounced their low riders and we were served Tacos for lunch.

At nineteen I moved to Canada to work for two years in Alberta and British Columbia. There I met other youth from all around the world, plus a lot of Canadians. I lived with a Scot who had tattooed the Dundee United foo’e ball logo on his wrist, taught me the Wellington Gum Boot song and lots of Scottish Drinking songs like this ditty:

Now Campbeltown Loch is a beautiful place,
But the price of the whisky is grim.
How nice it would be if the whisky was free
And the Loch was filled up to the brim. ​

I loved being in Edmonton the night the Edmonton Oilers won their first Stanley Cup playoff and being on Jasper Avenue when thousands turned out for the biggest party I’ve ever been to. I loved my Argentinean roommate with the most beautiful mother I had ever seen and his disdain for vegetables and his amazing grilling abilities. I loved my British friend who would eat sugar with a spoon directly from the bag, taught me how to eat chips drowned in malt vinegar and sharing his collection of British pop culture novels with me. I loved haggis, Mountain Goat burgers, gelatin made from a little rubbery cube and kids that would wake up in the middle of the night to check their beaver traps to sell the glands to perfume companies as a way to augment their college fund.

I didn’t have nearly as much to share with them since they knew what my California lifestyle was like since they’d seen it on TV and in the movies for so many years. It’s too bad that my California culture taught me so little about the rest of the world all around.

My employer, an American, often complained about the difficulty he had in getting us American’s to live peacefully with non-Americans. For him it was a continual barrage of complaints and problems over how weird and unusual the non-American roommates were. I’ve always felt what a shame it was that so many of my American friends missed out on such an amazing opportunity.

While in college my closest friend, after living two years in Québec and becoming fluent in French, majored in German and spent summers living abroad in Switzerland, Brazil and China. While in Switzerland, he worked at a boarding school where he was the only American. He loved the opportunity to delve into the culture and language far deeper than he could have in the midst of other Americans and actively sought out the opportunity to see the world through their eyes. (I was a boring Statistics Major and spent my summers in So Cal and Hawaii.)

In college I had a roommate from Yap, Micronesia. The first time he wore clothes was around 12 when puberty kicked in and he had pictures of his mother and sister sitting topless on a grass mat, that he had hanging on his bedroom wall. He tells the story of spending a week drinking heavily on a small neighboring island with no phone access. When he returned home his mother had been mourning his death and was preparing for his funeral since the last time he was seen was playing in the surf where some sharks were known to be.

I know what American’s think. I am one and I live around thousands of them. I grew up with Gilligan’s Island, Calvin Klein, Top Gun and 50 cent …and so have most of you.

Last summer I met the richest man I’ve ever met in my life. No, he’s not my wealthy Canadian friend that made his first 100 million at age 27 yet is one of the loneliest people I’ve ever met. Nor is my friend that sold his company for millions and then tried to kill himself six months later.

At age four this man began making bricks under the hot Indian sun from sun up to sun down, seven days a week. For generations that is what his poor family did in complete destitute poverty, where the debts of his fathers were passed down to him-- a situation of modern-day slavery. He now lives in the US in a working-class neighborhood near the airport where him and his wife work different shifts at a local printing press and earn around twelve dollars an hour. I asked him about his “American Experience” one day as he was preparing to drive to Las Vegas for the weekend. He held up his car key and said, “In my country I could have saved my entire life and I could never have afforded this key. But in America, not only do I get the key, but I get the whole car.” I don’t know too many native-born American’s who have that perspective, do you?

Only an American would say that Americans are not ethnocentric. It’s not a problem that we see our world through the eyes of our culture, but for my travels, I want to see the world not through the MTV generations eyes, but through the eyes of those who see the world from a perspective very different than mine.

Yes, I have an owner that is Canadian, resides in Canada, but does own a condo here. A Canadian can buy a US vessel and register it in the US if all of the normal US taxes are paid (mainly state sales tax).

I am somewhat knowledgable, but not totally knowledgable in the subject and have run a few foreign flagged vessels. You need to get your documentation from the customs office before leaving the US (whichever office happens to be holding it). Depending on where the vessel is flagged, with some countries you do not have to report when going to a different county (they called it a reciprocating country or something to that line at customs). I ran one boat that was Panamanian flagged and you did have to report to customs if going to a different county, like from Broward (ft. Laud) to Dade (Miami). With a vessel flagged in Cayman I did not. You have to go out of the country, and while I've heard for 15 days from people, the customs officer told me as long as it's 24 hours, which I have done and re-checked back into the country no problem. As long as it visited a foriegn port before checking back in and renewing your cruising permit. Again, you want to talk to someone who has far more knowledge then I do.

You can save a considerable amount of money. One Owner I worked for did it foriegn flagged when he bought it new, and two years later, US flagged it and paid sales tax on a much much lower value. I believe he told me he saved 110k doing that. A good documentation agent should be able to inform you of everything you need to know. I know Eileen Grossman is good and does a lot of foreign and us flagged documentations.

"I want more from my world-cruising experience and I hope to share a greater opportunity with my guests and my crew."

You left out curing cancer and creating world peace.

The link gets you to the DOT, but the page can't be found.

No I didn't. That's why I served on the board of the American Cancer Society, and currently on the board of City of Hope and also why I'm politically involved to prevent the election of another hawk.

That's a pretty good answer

Well the FL state tax will be at least 6% or $60,000 on a $1,000,000 boat. And setting up an offshore corp. should cost 1/10 or less then that. $54,000 buys a lot of fuel.

Now you could register the boat commercialy and not have to pay sales tax.

Changing the doc. from foreign to US is no big deal. You have to have the boat measured and then they make CAD drawings of it to submit to the USCG. There is a company here in Lauderdale that does it. I had their card. If you're interested I'm sure I can find it.

As to needing pilots, what would the tonnage of the vessel be?

"I thought the Jones Act required 75% or more of the total crew to be US citizens?"


The 25 percent limit on aliens does not apply to a yacht. (46 CFR 81 8103)

If the boat is documented and used in commercial service or is a fishing vessel then all the rules apply. But, like all the rules there are exemptions like the one I mentioned a few posts back regarding the use of foreign seamen in some cases between foreign ports .. but no, this is not a practical way around the law, it is there for highly unusual circumstances.

"...they make CAD drawings of it to submit to the USCG ..."

Not a bad scam, must be profitable for them. Under the Simplified measurement system, if the boat is less than 79 feet long the owner can submit the overall dimensions to the CG and that is it. If the boat is over 79 feet and used in international voyages it will probably have to be admeasured by a class surveyor to the Convention system, a simple and relatively inexpensive process. There is probably already an acceptable international tonnage certificate available for the boat anyway unless it is a one-off homebuilt affair.

I've HEARD that the US coast Guard was going to change the Jones act where it applies to vessels over 100something feet (like 120 ft or something) instead of over 65 feet, but I don't think anything has been done with that yet. The Jones act has become a pain in the butt here in South Florida because yachts over 65 feet fall under it and any subcontracter needs longshoremans insurance to work on the vessel (yards are enforcing that subcontractors have it, when they never used to care), and it is very expensive insurance. I've heard around $3,000 per month and a lot of subcontractors can't afford to have it.

I believe that may be a little outside their authority.

Isn't the Us Coast Guard the governing body that enacts and modifies maritime law?

Their job is enforcement and regulation, etc. You need to talk to the legislative branches (Congress).

I never heard of "longshoremans insurance", but around here the yards require $1M liability and worker's comp. That's simply CYA.

As an aside to the aside, don't forget that boats built in Canada and US flagged don't have to pay duty due to NAFTA.

Judy