A pleasure craft licence can be the best kind of licence. Basically, it’s a licence to have fun. You can take your friends or family out for a day or night on Canada’s wonderful waters. You can lie out in the sun and then gaze up at the stars. Go for a swim, go skiing,…
There are few words that are perhaps more satisfying to say than “pleasure craft.” To hear those words together evokes images of wonderful, lazy days in the sun, on the water, with those you care about most. However, if you’re worried about your documentation, licensing, and being stopped by the authorities, then it’s hard to…
Plenty of recreational vessel owners ask us whether or not they have to register their boat with Transport Canada, to which we often say “no, but you will need a pleasure craft licence”. More often than not their response is, well, “what is a pleasure craft licence?” Well, if you too have this question, don’t…
If you are a vessel owner or even a prospective one, then you are at least tangentially familiar with the Transport Canada ship registry. This database aims to keep track of all commercial vessels operating in Canadian waters. Not only does this help the corresponding agencies enforce important regulations and guidelines, but it also helps…
If you’re reading this site, you’ve probably heard of the Canada Shipping Act. It may sound like something that comes from centuries ago, but actually, it was ratified in 2001. This Act greatly impacted and changed how vessel registration works in Canada. If you haven’t registered a vessel in a long time, then the landscape…
Transport Canada provides Canadians quite a few resources, but they aren’t always simple to deal with. If you’ve ever had to deal with their licensing and registration rules for vessel owners before, then you may have discovered how their processes can be a bit counter-intuitive and somewhat opaque. After years of frustration, we came to…
Of the parts of our site that people don’t initially understand, “historical research” stands out. The other forms at our site, even if you don’t know exactly what they are for, make a kind of sense: licensing, registration, changing or altering some kind of registration, and so forth. Those are all forms that, one way…
If boat ownership has always been a goal of yours, you have probably been saving for years, waiting for just the right moment and the right ship to come up for sale before you are ready to dive in and make a purchase. Buying a boat of any size and for any purpose is a…
When buying a boat, it is essential that you have it registered as soon as possible, and absolutely before you start using it for commercial purposes. If you have bought a new boat, then you and the seller will have to complete a transfer of ownership form and submit it to the Transport Canada registry…
You have a checklist before you take your vessel out of port. Depending on your vessel and the circumstances, before you leave you may check the engine, fuel, weather, crew, plan, course, and the like. You do that for safety so that you’re prepared for any eventuality. Understanding that nothing is promised on the water,…