The permit program is a disaster waiting to happen – for Georgia as well as cruisers who love the state.  It seems so simple and the cost is modest.  However…

 

Nothing spoils the ambiance and experience of being anchored in a remote and beautiful spot like seeing a boat with a flashing blue light coming at you.   Am I going to have to stop watching the sunset and spend the next half hour showing my papers and watching them put dye in the head?  Requiring a permit taped to a window raises the prospect of a law enforcement officers going by each anchored boat it sees close enough to check the permit and read the number of nights purchased.   Then, they have to determine how many nights the boat has actually anchored.  That means either an Orwellian tracking data base or the need to stop and talk to the vessel.  This can only work as written if there are just a few approved anchorage areas in the state that can be monitored.  Just the need of law enforcement having to cruise by close enough to read a document on the window will cause many to either avoid the inside route or zip through just as fast as they can.  I’ve had people tell me that they avoid the state just because of the signs saying it is illegal to sleep on your boat more than 30 days a year.  It wasn’t that they planned to stay longer but because they didn’t want to have to establish to law enforcement how long they had been there.  I know this almost never happened but perception will keep people away just as well as fact.

 

Permits online?  There are many boats that cruise without Internet.   Sure, you can get the permit before you leave home but I’ve never gone into Georgia knowing how many nights I plan to spend there.  That depends on weather and whim.  Even on our 43 footer, we don’t carry a printer.   If we purchased four nights and need another, what are we going to do?  If a boat has purchased 5 nights and learns that Sunbury Crab Company is a must stop but it means another day, they are less likely to make the run up the river and spend money there. 

 

We hear that the permits won’t be enforced but are just a tool to get a handle on abandoned vessels.  Even if that is true, having laws on the books with no intent to enforce is terrible public policy.  It is an invitation to abuse and the economic and racial profiling the south already has a bad reputation for.   Furthermore, there will be little control over how this law enforcement tool is used in the future.   Marina and waterfront property owners will exert pressure to check every vessel and, while they are at it, inspect the heads and papers.   Local jurisdictions will use it as grant and budget writing support for additional boats and then need to justify them. This is what happened in Florida.  They lost the fight to restrict anchoring so pressure was put on law enforcement to aggressively inspect anchored vessels.  It got so bad that even the marina and shore business owners finally said, “Stop”.  Now you can cruise the state in relative peace. 

 

The DNR should have the flexibility to resolve problems like this within the final regulatory language.  The question is whether they have the knowledge of cruising culture and the will to resist the pressure of interests that want to drastically restrict anchoring.  Wording is powerful.   “Every vessel intending to remain anchored *in one location for more than seven days* shall obtain a permit.”  Put “overnight” inside the ** and you have a completely different situation.  The first version would accomplish everything we are told is the aim of the law regarding derelict and abandoned vessels without significantly changing the status quo. I haven’t had a chance to review the law.  Perhaps it has language that would restrict the DNR from making this adjustment in which case the state is going to become even more remote and less crowded.    Marina and waterfront property owners will like the second version and can be expected to fight for it.  The marina owners will come to regret it if they win.  Consider our case.  We cruise Georgia for the anchoring experience but the time spent usually results in a night at one of our favorite marinas because we need to re-supply and to pump out.  If there is a restrictive and enforced permit program for short term overnight anchoring, no marina in the state will see us or our money again.  We’ll join those running down the outside or make just a single midway stop in one of the approved anchorage areas.