NASBLA Roundtable

Maryland has been approached by our first efoil livery. The question came up about placement of the registration numbers.  Are states having owners put the numbers on the deck of the efoil, wrapping them around the edges somewhere else? Also have any states done outreach work to let boaters know these are considered PWC's and must follow all PWC regulations.

Hawaii has been requiring efoil owners to register as motorized vessels since September 2020 and has owners place registration numbers along the board rails.  Hawaii law treats PWCs differently, so we register efoils as Other.  Most numbers will need to wrap around the rail because of their shape and thickness, so the numbers may end up being placed partly on the deck and/or underside.

As far as outreach, we sent letters to all known efoil manufacturers selling in Hawaii and posted a notice on our website.  Manufacturers were told they needed to obtain a MIC and issue a MSO/MCO with every efoil. Officers also enforce the registration requirement for efoils.

I am assuming you've seen the policy linked to below already but just in case you need something to back you up. @Will Hillyer can speak to this topic more as well!  I know it doesn't fully answer your original questions though.

 USCG E-Foil Policy

Attachment(s)

BSX-Policy-Letter-22-02-eFoils-and-JetBoards-ch-1.pdf   218 KB 1 version

Philip,

We are starting to see this in NJ as well. Do to the size of the letters required, they will start on the deck and wrap down onto the rail. As of now, we are treating efoils as PWCs. We have not received any formal requests yet for efoil livery, but I suspect that we will uncover some operations this summer. NJ also requires pre-rental instruction, and I agree with Donna that we are going to have to tweak it a bit to make it work.