donal domeney wrote:stevecrow74 wrote:club insurance has always been a grey area.. in what it covers and what it doesnt..Mohawk wrote:It may also come as a surprise to most but it is not a legal requirement to have insurance on a charter boat in Ireland so some may not. It is up to you to ask the skipper when booking the boat..
Not sure where you got that from. This needs to be checked with the department of the marine.
Regarding the small boat issue, any small craft been used in ifsa competitions must carry their own insurance and are restricted to a 3 mile limit from shore and 15 miles from base. The ifsa insurance will cover any 3rd. party claim that may occur.
As I stated already there are on going talks within the ifsa with regard to insurance. Contact your club secretary for more details
Hi Donal
I got it from years of experience of liaising with the D.O.M, now the D.O.T chief superintendent surveyor Mr Brian Hogan and several of his colleagues both in the Cork and Dublin MSO. I own and operate a DOT P5 licensed charter boat and when buying my present boat had several very modern boats some less than 12 months old refused.
I think the Ifsa may have been caught asleep here :oops:
What you describe here with boats having to stay 3 miles from shore and 15 miles from point of departure is now and has been since the government wrote "SI-273" in to law way back in 2001 a "P 3" licensed passenger boat of which a good number of the large angling charter boats in Ireland are!
A boat would require several thousand euros worth of safety equipment and several thousand euros more of modifications to the boat to be granted a "P3" license.
The clause for the use of "for sea angling" was removed back then. That is why you don't or at least should not see old trawlers and wrecks in angling competitions anymore.
The DOM does not have anything to do with passenger boats anymore It is now the responsibility of the Department of Transport. I would strongly advise ifsa and clubs to correspond with the Marine Surveyors Office in either Cork or Dublin as you are in for a rude awakening if that is what clubs still believe.
As for small boats having insurance it is hard to believe that some of the older boats would actually get insurance to cover passengers now because it would require both an MSO survey to grant it a license (or exemption of) and then a very expensive private survey for the insurance company to accept the hull.
The MSO surveyors would be very slow to sign their name on anything even a new boat in the event it was to backfire on them later so they would be so rigorous it would be uneconomical for a small older boat to comply.
The skippers would also have to hold the relevant passenger boat masters qualifications with commercial endorsement. This is another area of which I have lots of experience as I was one of the intermediaries between the MSO the ISA several training course providers and several charter boat skippers along the south coast when this was rushed in to law last year.
The exemption I mentioned will allow no more than 3 on a boat in "Smooth waters" and still requires an MSO survey. Before you get excited "Smooth Waters" in Cork Harbour is inside a line drawn between the forts at Camden and Carlisle and no more than .5 of a mile from point of departure and several other stipulations rendering it little more than useless anyway. The only boats in Cork Harbour to benefit from it is small work boats operating in the inner harbour.
I would advise you to have several stiff brandys before you call the MSO you are in for a shock :( :( :(
Jim
