I’m not a big fan of bureaucracy but living or cruising on a sailboat it’s just part of the same old same.
The best way, in my personal opinion, of dealing with the beast is to simply know what is required and follow the rules. Sure, I know many of those rules are dumb or batshit crazy but so are most of the people enforcing said rules and applying logic to those enforcers is not a game you’re ever going to win. Trust me I know this from experience.
Now that we have a new to us boat, one of several things on the must do list is ticking off things like vessel radio license, getting our USCG documentation, and making sure that we have all the bits that that the functionary class say we have to have.
Luckily, most things required are fairly simple and not too expensive. Even better, some of those things are actually needful so we’d be getting them anyway so non-problematic at all.
For instance, back when we were about to sail from France to the Caribbean everyone told us that getting a VHF station license was not important but we still wound up getting one. Lucky for us, a year or so later, sailing into Dominica we were accosted by a police boat armed to the teeth and the only thing they wanted was our station license. Having one, transformed their attitude from pissed off and ready to rummage jerks into happy campers & wishing us a nice stay in Dominica. The first rule in dealing with authority and bureaucracy is having the right bit of paper they ask for delivered with a smile.
Which is why I’m not all that upset forking over the money for a station license for the Islander.
Oh yeah, here’s a link to something that brightened my day.