LEGALITIES By Carl Krause, SADSAA National Safety Officer
F
ROM AS far back as I can remember, any person who took a craft to sea in the capacity as “skipper” was required to have a “Skipper’s Ticket” or licence to do so. In the mid 1950s the few deep sea angling clubs that were in existence either had their own clubs’ skippers’ tickets or, in the Durban Area, the Port Captain instituted specific requirements that had to be incorporated into the club’s rules. Thereafter, following the formation of the South African Ski-Boat Association, efforts were made to ensure that all crafts’ skippers were licenced throughout South Africa and that stringent requirements came into force regarding the issuing of competency certificates. These could only be issued after skippers had undergone intense practical and theory training and had indeed
GETTING Is your skipper’s ticket legal?
proved themselves to be competent skippers. When the current national authority — South African Marine Safety Authority (SAMSA) — was introduced under a national government decree and legislation, all the different “skippers’ tickets” were technically made redundant and their version of “grandfather clauses” with a specific time frame resulted in one uniform skipper’s ticket being used nationwide. As happens with so many regulated
documents, a great number of “licensed skippers” either never became aware of the new requirement or adopted the stance of “I have my skippers ticket and have been taking a boat to sea for 10, 20, 30 years, so why must I change now?” It’s a reality that we live in an era of stringent controls in most aspects of life, and the requirement to have the right SAMSA Skipper’s Ticket to take a craft to sea is one of them. In recent months I have had hun-
NEED UPGRADING ASAP TO SAMSA FORMAT
None of these variations are acceptable as legal skippers tickets. They need to be converted to the proper SAMSA format, and categories and endorsements must be shown.
10 • SKI-BOAT January/February 2019