To be fair, the USCG is struggling mightily with recruitment. Young people are not attracted to serving. The good news is that for the first time since 2017, the USCG has met its recruiting goals, but they are still working with a deficit.


How long will it take the USCG to train the new recruits that manage to survive Cape May? When can the industry expect to see better customer service? Like it or not, the Coast Guard is in the customer service business.


Data Collection: For the Greater Good?


Image credit: Pat Folan


And while we are talking about measuring, why is it that every little thing that happens on a towing vessel (or any certificated vessel) must be reported to the USCG? Technically, it’s not supposed to be every little thing, but most USCG units err on the side of caution and request reports for everything and then they say they’ll weed them out. But why? What is the point? Nothing useful ever comes of it. The USCG is sitting on a mountain of data from all sectors of the marine industry, but they don’t provide useful insights to the industry that they regulate. The FAA and OSHA also collect data, and their databases are searchable and useful. If I wanted to see trends across a certain industry in a specific geographic area, I could get the data from OSHA. But, if I was looking for the number of times a particular diesel propulsion or generator engine fails on towing vessels, I am out of luck. We as taxpayers spend a lot of money on the USCG, but it doesn’t seem to go to upgrade the systems that the industry could use.


Why isn’t every 835 that is issued by the USCG online in a searchable database? It would be a great learning tool to be able to see what deficiencies exist. At my company we track 835s and the inspectors that wrote them. That’s because it’s nice to know the inspector’s pet peeves and even better to be able to share that information with customers in the areas that the inspectors transfer into.


The same issues apply when it comes to appeals. They live and die at the unit level. Because we work across many sectors and districts,


we learn about appeals and file them away in case we ever need them. But most people are unaware that an appeal has been filed and what the disposition is. A win for industry should be shouted from the mountaintops. Making the appeals public helps mariners and the Coast guard, alike. They’ll spend less time writing 835’s if they know there are successful appeals to the deficiency they are pondering, and industry will also not waste anyone’s time appealing something that has been shot down a few times.


The appeals process should be rewritten. I can commit a crime and be out on appeal on personal recognizance, but the boat can’t


work until the appeals process is completed. And it’s hard to believe that it is a fair system because one officer is highly unlike to overturn another officer’s decision. Their mutual progress up their career ladders arguably depends on helping each other. We are repeatedly told by inspectors around the country that they do not have enough inspectors to do their job in a timely manner. The backlog is bad enough that we had a company come back to the TPO Option from the USCG Option because it lost 30 days waiting on the USCG in the previous year. And only the US Government would double the cost of the inspection and provide less for the owner’s money.


THE REPORT | MAR 2025 | ISSUE 111 | 91


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