When it comes to vessel documentation, one of the most important components will be the displayed identification number. What are the required licence number display guidelines? Here, we have everything that you need to know about this.
What Are the Required Licence Number Display Guidelines?
If you’ve ever gone out to the ocean, you’ve probably seen the identification numbers on the hulls of ships and boats passing by. Well, these are a requirement from Transport Canada, the transportation agency of the Canadian government, to facilitate the identification of boats at first glance. This is mandatory for commercial boats, but not always for all recreational and other non-commercial vessels. Those that do have to, have to display their pleasure craft licence number.
What is Your Licence Number?
Your pleasure craft licence number will be the number that you receive, well, when you apply for a pleasure craft licence. Per the Canada Shipping Act of 2001, as well as Transport Canada regulations, owners of recreational and non-commercial vessels in the country over a certain size and horsepower will have to get a pleasure craft licence for it. This licence will come with a number that will have to be properly displayed on the outside of the boat in question. This is done to provide maritime authorities, both in Canadian and in foreign waters, with easy identification of the boat. What are the required licence number display guidelines? Well, let’s take a look.
How to Display the Number
As previously mentioned, there are very particular guidelines that need to be taken into account at the time of displaying the pleasure craft number on your boat. If you are not aware of where the pleasure craft number should be displayed or end up painting the digits in the wrong place, you might end up getting in trouble with the Transport Canada authorities. To avoid that, let’s make sure you have everything in order. What are the required licence number display guidelines?
The licence number needs to be displayed on both sides of the bow.
For obvious reasons, the number needs to be above the waterline.
The digits need to be written in block characters that are at least 7.5 centimetres (or 3 inches) high.
The colour of the letters needs to distinctly contrast with the colour of the bow.
Get Your Pleasure Craft Licence
Filing any sort of registration or licence application with Transport Canada can be somewhat challenging for a variety of reasons. Requirements can get confusing, and forms can be frustrating. For that reason, we have set up this platform: to help you navigate the wide variety of processes handled by Transport Canada without any issues. Trust our team to assist you with getting your watercraft’s documentation processed quickly and easily. You can find all the forms you might need on our menu, but feel free to reach out to us if you have any doubts about any of them. We’re here to help you get your documentation in order.