Boating and crazy bureaucracy. Four emblematic cases

If you thought bureaucracy in boating had finally gotten its head on straight, read here. You will find that there are incentives for electric but you don’t know how to get them. You will realize that all you need to navigate legally is a receipt and that in Slovenia if you don’t have a license plate they will throw you out.

Bureaucracy/1. Incentives for electric…maybe

Incentives are coming, perhaps, for those who change the engine by replacing it with an electric one. We say maybe because the decree law is there but, as usual, the implementing regulations are still lacking. The facility, which allocates 1.5 million euros for 2022/2023, provides for the reimbursement of 40 percent of the expenses incurred for the purchase of an electric motor and battery pack by demonstrating the simultaneous scrapping of the old fuel engine.

Case 2. If there is no license

Those who have bought a new boat or need to renew their boat license if it flies the Italian flag know this. The time to get it is long, very long. The risk is not being able to navigate in the meantime. To obviate slow bureaucracy, the validity of the receipt that replaces the sailing license has been extended from 20 to 60 days.

Bureaucracy/3. You don’t go to Slovenia, Croatia and Albania with small

Even this summer, those who ventured into Slovenia, Croatia and Albania with an unregistered boat risked being thrown out of those countries’ waters. This is a year-old absurd rule of the eastern Adriatic capitancies prohibiting entry and stationing of boats without license plates. But as you know, vessels with hull lengths up to 10 meters with an Italian flag are not registered and therefore lack a license plate. The most hilarious case is of a boat that showed a phony license plate…and was accepted!

Case 4. They won’t renew my boat license!

There are many boaters who ruined their vacations this summer because they failed to get their boating license renewal in time. There are cases of people who after five months of submission of documentation by boating agencies had still not received their renewed license. It is proof that the harbor master’s offices that also issue licenses are struggling and unable to process nautical paperwork that includes flag changes and registration.