65m as Pleasure craft possible?

Ignore resale... The thing couldn't come into US waters ever. I can just imagine a plaintiffs attorney getting the owner on the stand...

So you intentionally build a boat that was far less safe than industry standards? Yes
In fact didn't you specifically state you wanted this boat to be less safe than other yachts? Yes

To the jury "what we have here is a obscenely rich man who intentionally made a boat less safe than it should have been, who flouted the best recomendations of experts, and because of that intentional disregard for the safety of the passengers and crew my client is now injured...."


I am not kidding when I say any plaintiffs attorney in the US would litterly drool at the possibility of suing someone who is worth tens of millions of dollars and built a yacht like this

 

Yep, that kind of stuff only flies over here if you're in Congress! *bada*boom*kish*

 

And even if a yacht was built to class, what would stop an attorney from 'litterly' suing the owner? I mean, besides not having a valid claim or cause of action.

Vessels built to class, which are properly registered and/or inspected by national authorities, get sued all the time. However, that is what insurance is for: to compensate plaintiffs for injury, real or imagined.

Just because a vessel happens to be floating at peace, minding its own business, it is not lawsuit bait for the overly litigious. The vessel still has to run into someone or something, or someone must get hurt on the vessel, before a claim can be manufactured.

If you are Bill Gates and you want to take a spare billion out of the bank and build a personal yacht the size of the Queen Mary 2, there is nothing in the US regulations which would force you to class such a vessel or build to class, as long as it was not hired out, say for charters, or put into commercial service. There is nothing in the Code of Federal Regulations which says that such a recreational vessel is required to meet load line or stability regulations as long as it remains in recreational use.

If a plaintiff attorney were foolish enough to sue someone like Bill Gates because of his yacht, he had better have a damn good case, because Gates' father was an attorney himself and Gates is no stranger to getting sued by one or more countries at the same time. He's undoubtedly got armies of attorneys on speed dial ready to go to work for him.

 

Easy Stumble your talking from the US where they make Browards that should never leave the ICW.

Suing..
because like commercial shipping you will never find the owner...


W

 

I don't need the owner, I can just arrest the ship.

There is a far cry between winning a lawsuit when someone is injured at sea and when someone is injured at sea on a vessel that was intentionally built as less than safe. One is an accident the other is building a non-seaworthy yacht.

 

True
Hence most US owners wont have US flag or crew to get away from the suing thing.

 

It's your opinion that a vessel not required to be built to class or other regulation is 'unseaworthy'. Others can and will disagree.

Like any other claim brought into court in the US, a plaintiff must prove unseaworthiness or negligence or whatever he says caused his accident or injury. There is nothing which is absolutely 'safe'; there are degrees of comparison with some arbitrary standard of what is 'safe'.

Up until about 10 years ago, towing vessels built in the US were uninspected by the USCG and not required to meet much of anything in way of construction standards, except they had to carry enough life jackets for the crew and they had to float, among other things. Were all of these towing vessels 'unsafe'? It depends. There were no regulatory standards against which to judge this question, only someone's opinions based on experience with similar vessels. And yet we did not see towing vessels being arrested wholesale by hungry attorneys.

However, if you start arresting vessels willy-nilly, you had better be able to show cause in court why you shouldn't be sanctioned for abuse of the legal system. I would hope, if you are a member of the bar and de facto an officer of the court, that you would have more respect for your profession.

 

I'd go with: lawyers aren't a "protected class" as far as civil rights go, post that they are not welcome and cannot come aboard.

 

Half the offshore business in the gom is non classed vessels so they can use cheaper non licensed drivers.
Any they are bigger than 65m but under 99 grt
You wouldnt get away with that in any other civilized country

 

Of course arresting a vessel is easy but you do need to fully fund it whilst you have arrested it on daily basis

 

I glanced back through the thread but that didn't help, and neither did Google, so let me ask: what or where is "gom"?

Just curious.

 

Gulf of Mexico
Aka the patch or the bayou

 

I'm afraid you are mistaken. On US flag-vessels, the US Coast Guard is the licensing authority for maritime personnel, from the master down to the oilers/deckhands. The license for deck officers is based on the gross tonnage of the vessel, while for engineers it is based on the type of plant (steam or motor) and the installed power. Deck officers and engineers are still required to sit and pass a written examination administered by the USCG and have a certain amount of sea time before receiving a license.

The fact that a vessel is classed or not has nothing to do with whether a license is required. Classification societies do not license or train deck officers or engineers. Class is a means to show that a vessel has been designed and built to certain standards using quality materials and approved fabrication techniques.

There are quite a few vessels in the GOM which are under 99 GT, but like offshore areas the world over, as the work shifts to deeper water, you need larger vessels to do the work. Offshore supply vessels once were limited to less than 500 GT by US regulations, but these vessels now can be as large as 6000 GT. Many newer boats are more than 60 meters in length and are equipped with dynamic positioning (DP) systems.

When offshore platforms and installations (floating or fixed) cost more than US $1 billion to build and install, the owners of these platforms are quite leery about having just anybody with a boat coming alongside and tying up. At many of the newer platforms, the vessels are no longer permitted to moor to the platform, which is why DP systems are rapidly becoming standard equipment for newer vessels, and many older vessels are being converted to add DP systems when being refit.

PS: The largest OSVs in the GOM which are less than 99 GT are about 150 feet (50 meters) long. Most of these small boats average around 30-35 meters long.

 

sounds like a news flash from 1980
PS I have a mate on a 243' psv that is 99tons, (for any other classification society besides the USCG that would be over 400grt) they do it to save money, its a scam and the world is laughing, now they have themselves trapped as they dont qualify for sea time to get a NI DP license.

Your other statement about size not relating to the license is also wrong.

 

You still don't know what you are talking about.

The US Coast Guard is not a 'classification society'. It is a branch of the U.S. Government inside the Department of Homeland Security. It has law enforcement powers aboard all commercial vessels foreign and domestic operating in US waters, as well as the authority to inspect all commercial vessels coming into US ports. For US-flag vessels required to have a certificate of inspection, the USCG performs the inspection and issues the certificate.

Deck and engineering officers aboard US-flag vessels are licensed by the US Coast Guard. The regulations about licensing are here:

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2012-title46-vol1/pdf/CFR-2012-title46-vol1-part11.pdf

Deck officers in the US are graded primarily on the size of the vessels on which they serve as measured by the gross register tonnage (GRT). There may be a variety of endorsements on a license according to vessel type and area of operation, along with notice of any special qualifications or training which the officer has received. Engineering officers are graded by the type of machinery (steam or motor) and the amount of installed horsepower for the main propulsion machinery.

The calculation and determination of gross register tonnage is done according to national or international regulations. A vessel is not arbitrarily assigned a tonnage, and other factors besides length come into play. For vessels having an International Tonnage Certificate (ITC), a copy of this document will be carried aboard, which states the gross and net tonnage. In the US, the US Coast Guard was once the sole authority in charge of the determination of the vessel's tonnage, but they have now delegated this function to recognized classification societies like ABS and DnV.

You claim that a 243' PSV is under 99 tons, but you don't provide a vessel name or any other information to back it up.