Long haul: Improper boat towing causing problems
By Amy Hotz,
Staff Writer
Published: Thursday, April 10, 2008 at 2:22 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, April 10, 2008 at 6:57 p.m.
Star-News File With Memorial Day weekend and the summer fast approaching, plenty of boats will be hitting area ramps. However, improperly towing your boat to the ramp can cost you plenty in fines.
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Explaining North Carolina boat towing laws
When Don Ewing told a group of boat dealers in Washington he'd been pulled over for having an oversized boat trailer, they told him, "Welcome to the $500 club."
Ewing, a Pinehurst resident, travels up and down the East and Gulf coasts to fishing tournaments with his 32-foot Fountain power boat. About three months ago, he was pulled over by a state trooper because he did not have the proper permit or driver's license to pull a boat trailer more than 102 inches wide.
The fisherman said he wasn't so mad at the $500 fine, the $100 annual permit he had to get, or the time and money it required to get a class A license. He even got over the five hours his boat and truck spent on the side of the road waiting for someone with a Class A license to rescue him.
What he's still upset about, he said, are the laws governing towing boats in North Carolina.
"It just ain't right, the way the laws are written. And if a man can pull a tractor trailer on Sundays, why can't he pull a boat?" Ewing said.
Other fishermen have scratched their heads at the complex laws as well. To help educate them and clarify the details, the N.C. Highway Patrol has organized a public forum to be held 6 p.m. April 21 at the Warwick Center on the University of North Carolina Wilmington campus, 601 S. College Road.
Patrolmen and other officials will be on hand to talk, give out information packets and answer questions.
The state's laws surrounding boat towing are intricate. They are determined, among other things, by gross weight, width, what kind of vehicle is towing the boat and whether the boat is moved for commercial or private purposes. In addition, if a trailer falls under N.C. Department of Transportation General Statute 20-119, if it's more than 102 inches wide, it cannot be hauled on Sundays, certain holidays or at night.
Those are prime times for vacationers traveling to area beaches and for tournament fishermen who might want to drive back home after an out-of-town competition.
State Representative Bonner Stiller (Rep.), says the laws are outdated, and in May he plans to introduce a bill to change some towing requirements while still keeping drivers safe on the roads.
Stiller, a boater with a home in Oak Island, said he believes they might have originally been intended for moving houses and large equipment, not boats.
"I'm trying to put some common sense into this whole issue," he said. "There's a fella from Florida who got a huge ticket, $1,600 in fines, and got tied up on the side of the road for 6 1/2 hours. And he was just
absolutely, couldn't believe it. And he got on the Internet and sent it through the boating community."
Laws called "anti-tourism"
Boating, recreational fishing and sport fishing tournaments add a lot of revenue to the state's economy. Stiller called the boat towing regulations "anti-
tourism." He's concerned complex and outdated laws have already turned people and money away from the state.
The representative also is concerned about what he and other fishermen, such as Ewing, see as a new crackdown on enforcing the boat trailer laws. Stiller said he first heard of someone getting pulled for an oversized trailer in October or November after a tournament in Morehead City.
Ewing said he's been fishing on the tournament circuit for 10 years and didn't learn about the rules until he got pulled over.
"In the past, it hasn't been enforced on boaters. So, I don't know what transpired to all of a sudden cause someone to pass down, I guess, the order to start
enforcing this thing, but we definitely want to make it where people can transport their boats on any day of the year," Stiller said.
N.C. Highway Patrol First Sgt. W.A. Hook and three other patrolmen interviewed by the Star-News said, to their knowledge, there has not been any special
enforcement efforts to catch people who aren't complying with the boat towing laws.
"We've always enforced the laws," Hook said.
When gathering statistics, the Highway Patrol
includes oversized boat trailer citations among other trailer-related citations. So, determining how many tickets were given out only for oversized boat trailers over the years is not available.
But Brant McMullan, owner of Ocean Isle Fishing Center, said fishermen have been venting to him about what they see as patrol officers' discovery of an
obscure law.
"The first time I've heard of it would have been last year, in the fall," McMullan said.
From phone calls he's received from fishermen, he estimates the citations started somewhere in Morehead City and north of there in the Outer Banks. He didn't think it was a local problem until he began getting calls from fishermen in Brunswick County who had been ticketed.
Like Ewing, McMullan said he wouldn't have a problem with the laws if he felt they had been enforced all along. He said a similar towing permit is required to cross the bridges that lead to Key West in Florida but that he's heard no complaints about that because the requirements are common knowledge.
First Sgt. Hook and other patrolmen plan to rectify that with the meeting on April 21 because, until Stiller gets his way, these laws still apply.
Amy Hotz: 343-2099
amy.hotz@starnewsonline.com 
Boat towing article in the Star News 
