[PCW] Jones Act Waivers

[Mark]

I haven't kept up with any changes, but in 2004/5 I applied for a Jones Act Waiver for a 32' power cat that was built in Australia that I wanted to charter in California.  It took a little while to process, but it came through after the fee was paid as Tim said - no calls to congressmen required!  My memory is that you apply for a certain geographical area, they publish the requests for waivers in the federal register and they give competitors time to object that you would hurt their business.  If no one objects, it goes through.    

I originally applied for the whole west coast of the US, which includes Alaska.  The administrator contacted me and said that if I didn't really plan to operate in AK I shouldn't apply so broadly since they'd had an increased number of objection in SE Alaska at that time. 

 http://www.marad.dot.gov/programs/smallvessel/index.html

Mark


----- Original Message ----
From: Georgs Kolesnikovs <georgs at powercatamaranworld.com>
To: Power Catamaran List <power-catamaran at lists.samurai.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2007 5:09:46 AM
Subject: Re: [PCW] go-anywhere power cats (Robert Deering), Jones Act

Bob, John and others--

Hold your horses on the Jones Act until I get an update as to the 
facts in 2007.

I believe the recap by Tim Askins describes the situation, but I'll 
doublecheck.

--Georgs

>Thanks for the pricing clarification.  Better, but still far out of my
>range.
>
>I'm no Jones Act expert, but I understand that it was passed as
 legislation
>to protect American ship builders from low-priced foreign
 competitors...you
>know, like you.
>
>The ruling basically says that a ship (boat) for hire may not
 originate in
>one US port and terminate in another unless its hull is US-built.
  That's
>why for many years cruise ships (foreign hulls) running to Alaska
 departed
>from Vancouver BC instead of Seattle.  I understand that some of the
 ships
>now depart from Seattle so they must have achieved an exemption since
>Seattle was missing out on a lot of tourist revenue.
>
>I'm not aware of many charter boat exemptions.  The Grand Banks
 Northwest
>question relates to bare-boat charters I believe which must not be
 subject
>to the Jones Act.
>
>Certainly most people buying a new $1M+ 55 ft boat aren't thinking
 charter.
>It's the people that buy the boat from them that start to fall into
 that
>group.  But buying expensive boats isn't an inherently rational
 process
>anyway, so it's unreasonable to expect most buyers to give resale
 value much
>consideration. 
>
>
>Bob Deering
>Juneau, Alaska 
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