The Boat Company
July 27, 2005 [Email]

Office of Technical and Information Services
Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board
1331 F Street NW, Suite 1000
Washington, DC 20004-1111

Ladies and Gentlemen:

The Boat Company, a member of the Passenger Vessel Association, submits these comments regarding your efforts to develop accessibility guidelines for passenger vessels, as published in the Federal Register of November 26, 2004. Please include these comments in the official record of both of your dockets as well as the corresponding U.S. Department of Transportation Docket.

The Boat Company is a luxury adventure, revenue generating non-profit that conducts conservation tours in Southeast Alaska and advocates for sound resource management practices affecting those areas. We operate two vessels, the M/V LISERON, a converted WWII wooden hulled US Naval Minesweep and the M/V MIST COVE, a slightly larger replica of her sister ship. Our vessels accommodate 20 and 24 passengers respectively for overnight cruising in the inland passages of Southeast Alaska. Our services include but are not limited to whale watching, hiking, fishing and beach combing in bays and coves through out Southeast.

Our trips are designed so that we are only in port the day our passengers arrive and the day they disembark the vessels. The rest of the trip is spent out in the wilderness of the Tongass National Forest. We do not own or control any of the docks used throughout our season in Alaska. Our vessels cruise seasonally between the end of May thru the first week of September. We employ approximately 22 seasonal crew members, with a year round administrative staff of six, and we carry approximately 700 passengers in a season.

I am aware that the Passenger Vessel Assocation has been in frequent contact with the Access Board regarding this rulemaking, including testifying at public hearings three times in 2005. I support the following points that PVA has stressed in its comments:

• Providing access in marine and aquatic environments is more challenging than doing so at sites on land. Waves, wind, tides, fluctuating river and lake levels, and various types of vessel motions must be contended with. In designing, constructing, and operating a vessel, there is no higher priority than safety.
• There is a wide diversity of types, sizes, and functions of passenger vessels in the U.S. domestic passenger vessel fleet. Most vessels to be affected by the Access Board action are not cruise ships.
• Designing accessibility into a vessel becomes exponentially more difficult as the size of the vessel decreases. Therefore, it is appropriate to have one set of guidelines for vessels with a capacity of more than 150 passengers, and a different set for vessels with a smaller passenger capacity.
• The Access Board should develop its guidelines for vessels with a capacity of more than 150 passengers first, waiting until after this work is complete before further studying and developing guidelines for smaller vessels.
• The recommendations of the Passenger Vessel Access Advisory Committee, on which four PVA members participated, are preferable to the proposed guidelines put forth by the Access Board.
• Any provision that passenger vessels be required to provide vertical access between decks should be tailored very narrowly to those vessel designs and capacities that are capable of safely and efficiently structurally impractical, and potentially unsafe. This is particularly true for small vessels.

As an addenda to this letter we are attaching a letter we sent June 27, 2005 which with some other (additional) concerns we have.

Thank you for this opportunity to participate in your rulemaking process.

Respectfully Submitted,
Hunter H. McIntosh
Director of Marketing
The Boat Company
1200 Eighteenth St, NW
Suite 801
Washington, DC 20036

Attachment

June 27, 2005

Office of Technical and Information Services
Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board
1331 F Street, NW
Suite 1000
Washington, DC 20004-1111

Dear Sirs:

We operate 1-week conservation oriented tours aboard two vessels (20 and 24 passengers) in Southeast Alaska during the summer months (June to August). The towns we sail out of are Juneau and Sitka.

Our customers tend to be active people and, as a result, we usually cruise no more than 3 to 4 hours a day (primarily mornings) and by lunch time, have dropped anchor in a bay/cove.

The afternoons and early evenings are spent in off-boat activities – hikes, shore walks (in Southeast Alaska, there are few, if any, “beaches”), kayaking, etc.

The companion ways on our ships are narrow and because rough weather is frequent, the sills on our cabins are six-inch high to prevent sea water from entering them.

We heard your organization was going to have representatives in Southeast Alaska the latter part of June and contacted PVA (the Passenger Vessel Association) with the intention of making one of our ships available for your group to take a look at while in Juneau.

Unfortunately, PVA informed us that wouldn’t be possible as you were only going to be in town during the week (small, overnight passenger vessels are seldom, if ever, in town then as they drop off and pick up passengers on week-ends).

Accordingly, we feel the Access Board has passed up the opportunity of learning about small vessel owners who operate overnight tours (at least in SE Alaska).

Sincerely,

Michael A. McIntosh
MAM:eb

cc: Paul Beatty
PVA (Ed Welch)
David Crosby, Esq.