Sailing with expired license

Certain rules apply if you want to drive a hire boat—contact your local Maritime Safety Queensland office to find out more. Once you have your Queensland marine licence, you don't need to renew it—it is valid for life.

If you are concerned about your medical fitness, tell your BoatSafe training provider who can give you information about processing marine licences with medical conditions.

Once you successfully complete your BoatSafe course, the training provider will give you a statement of competency. You will need this as part of your application for a Queensland marine licence.

Your statement of competency for completing the BoatSafe course is only valid for 6 months from the date of issue. You can apply for your marine licence at your nearest transport and motoring customer service centre or QGAP office that provides marine licensing services—please call to confirm before visiting. If you don't have a valid Queensland driver licence, we will send you a marine licence indicator card. If you have signed up for e-reminders we will email you when your licence is posted.

Verify your marine licence. Make sure it meets the following requirements. In addition to your vessel registration number, you will also receive a registration sticker. Your registration sticker must be clearly visible at all times. Please do not place any numbers, letters, or devices near the registration sticker other than your vessel registration number.

To remind you that you need to renew your registration, DMV will mail you a renewal notice 60 days before your registration expires. Visit our online registration page to see if your vessel is eligible to be renewed online. You can also renew your registration by phone automated system , mail, or by visiting a DMV field office in person. If you do not receive or lose the renewal notice, you may contact DMV and pay your fees. If there is a lienholder, you need their signature on line 2.

Once you have the California Certificate of Ownership, write your name and address on the back. Then you can submit the certificate to DMV along with the transfer fee, use tax, and any renewal fees that might be due. DMV might deny registration renewal or transfer if the county tax collector tells DMV that you have not paid your personal property taxes. Our special interest guide for boat owners is full of great information on everything from registration to quagga requirements. When your chat is over, you can save the transcript.

Use caution when using a public computer or device. The DMV chatbot and live chat services use third-party vendors to provide machine translation.

Machine translation is provided for purposes of information and convenience only. The DMV is unable to guarantee the accuracy of any translation provided by the third-party vendors and is therefore not liable for any inaccurate information or changes in the formatting of the content resulting from the use of the translation service.

It is not how much stuff you had loaded on a boat. It is a calculation of theoretical displacement if the complete available interior volume of a ship were filled with material of density 1 i. There are formulas available to estimate that based on the dimensions and type of boat.

The calculations are necessarily different for a sailboat and a power boat. On a very rough order of magnitude, a Ton powerboat would be about 80 feet long and a Ton sailboat would be about feet long. The tonnage rating is a not to exceed limitation.

One need not necessarily serve on a 50 ton or ton vessel to earn the equivalent tonnage rating see the table below for specifics on that. One cannot be granted more than a Ton rating on an initial license because higher tonnage requires that one has served in a licensed capacity before applying for the higher tonnage.

When I renewed my license in November, I applied for a Ton rating which was granted conditional to my successfully passing the mandated written test. By the time you read this, I expect to have taken that exam.

While you may apply for a ton rating, you may only be granted 50 tons or less if your experience does not justify the higher rating. Additionally, the greater the scope, the more sea time is required to qualify for the rating. For example, while an Inland scope needs days of total sea time with 90 days in the last 3 years, a near-coastal scope requires days and again the day recency requirement.

The take-away here is that experience is a big determinant and should NOT be discounted in any way. Note that there is no path to being granted an Ocean scope except by being a licensed mate or master for at least 2 years with documented service on those waters. That is, it is impossible to apply for an Oceans scope on a first application. As coarse as this may sound, the reason is that it is assumed that with an OUPV license, the most damage one can do is to 6 people.

Therefore, there is no particular benefit to issuing OUPV with varying tonnage ratings. Discussions of ratings over tons or Ocean routes are beyond the scope of this article. You may contact the author if you wish more information on those specific topics. For an Inland route, generally all of your documented sea time will be on Inland waters.

While Inland technically includes the Great Lakes and Western Rivers, there are additional requirements in service and knowledge for those waters. For a Near Coastal route, ideally, all of your time will be on Near-Coastal waters; however, you are allowed to substitute up to half of the days required minimum with Inland route service. For the purposes of documenting sea time for a Near Coastal route, any time served beyond the 3-mile limit counts for that purpose.

So if you charter in the Caribbean or crew on an offshore fishing trip, that time counts. Just to be clear, sea time is not counted unless you are a working member of the crew of the vessel named on the sea service form.

That is to say, just being a passenger is not sufficient. To keep things on the up and up, the applicant is required to get the signature of the owner, manager, or master of the vessel on the sea service form. If the applicant owns the identified vessel, proof of ownership must accompany the form. Proof might be a Bill of Sale, vessel document, or a state registration. Sea time is not counted unless you spend at least 4 hours of a given day underway. Being onboard the boat at the dock swabbing the decks does not count.

Time underway is counted whether it is in route or adrift. Being anchored or moored also does not count. It can be tedious to collect and collate all of your sea service forms, especially after the fact. My best advice is even if you are only thinking about getting a license, keep blank sea service forms with you for the vessel operator to sign at the end of a trip.

Note that the forms are not per trip but per vessel. There is room to document up to 5 years of sea time on any given vessel. There is room for five years of data because your license will be up for renewal every 5 years. Technically, vessels over gross tons now require a Service Letter from the employer or vessel manager. That form was accepted for that as well as again when I renewed and requested an upgrade to Tons.

I may have been grandfathered so new applicants should verify their individual situations with the National Maritime Center. To be a Captain, one must be in good health and of reasonable physical ability. The Medical form CGK is the most extensive form one will need to complete. It also requires the signature of a licensed physician.

Your family doctor is acceptable. For my part, I completed as much of the form as was reasonable. I then FAXed the form ahead of my annual physical so that the doctor could review what was needed and to be prepared to sign off on it. The only extra thing the doctor had to do was conduct color vision and standard wall chart vision test.

Your vision need not be perfect without glasses but if that is the case, you should expect a requirement to be written on your license requiring corrective lenses to be used and a spare pair to be available when on duty. If your medical form is accepted, you will be issued a separate medical form which is to be kept with your Merchant Mariner Credential.

The TWIC will be addressed below. Another form to be completed, this time by an authorized physician, is the DOT five-panel drug test. An applicant must submit proof of drug testing with no findings as determined by an authorized physician.

Also be aware that to work aboard any vessel in any compensated capacity, you must have proof of participation in a drug test program, whether it be one in which you elect to participate as an individual or one required by your marine employer. Such proof is to be carried with you at all times just as your license and medical certificate must be. It is generally in the form of a letter attesting to your compliance and passing a test within 12 months of the date of the letter.

One has always been required to agree to a criminal background and driving record check. In fact, anyone working in the transportation sector air, rail, marine, trucking, etc. You will be investigated for any evidence of threat potential to national security. This is because as a licensed Captain, you may have access to vital and strategic marine facilities.

There is an application to complete and a fee to pay. Furthermore, you must appear in person so that your photo and fingerprints can be taken.

This bio-metric data is stored on the TWIC card and protected by a pass code. Separately, a photograph of the applicant must accompany the application. It should be a state or federal government issued document. Others may be accepted but the applicant should verify this with the NMC before submitting the application to avoid processing delays.

An applicant is required to take a test that covers at least three areas of knowledge:. Deck General includes a wide variety of topics including fire and safety, terminology, and laws and procedures. Rules of the Road covers exactly what it says. Bear in mind that even if you are applying for an Inland or Near Coastal license, the Rules of the Road test will include elements of International Rules.

So when you are studying, do not neglect to familiarize yourself with those details. There are some variations in vessel precedence, sound signals, and lights and shapes displayed by vessels. The same is true if you are additionally requesting an endorsement for Sail, Auxiliary Sail, or Commercial Assistance Towing. The net effect is more questions overall.

The Navigation questions will require you to work with a chart to plot position, routes, and so forth. You will receive a certificate of completion from the school to submit with your application in lieu of the Coast Guard exams; however, you will still take exams which include questions from the same list of questions that the Coast Guard uses.

In the latter case, you will not need to pay an examination fee but obviously, you will have to pay a tuition for the course. The license application is not unlike many others. It is actually shorter than the medical form discussed earlier. There are two things to note on the application:.

Payment of all required application and examination fees is made online prior to submitting the application. You will receive a receipt which you should include with your application package. Pay close attention to the various fees and be sure you select all that apply but ONLY those that apply. An error either way will delay processing of your application. When you apply for an original license and especially if you plan to take the Coast Guard exams , you will need to present yourself in person with your complete application package at a USCG Regional Examination Center REC.

Photo ID will be necessary as well. One thing that happens if you appear in person is that you will raise your right hand and take the oath on the application. That was a very moving moment for me. Delivering your application package in person also allows you to interact with the personnel directly which could be very valuable if there are errors or omissions in your application package.

If you are not taking the Coast Guard exams and if you have been sworn by an authorized official, you may wish to submit your application by mail or electronically. Be aware that electronic submission has a limit on the size of the email attachment.

My applications have always been larger than what is accepted by the Coast Guard mail servers. The Coast Guard has implemented a very good system of tracking your application and providing feedback at every step of the way.