The Drunk Client Protocol

The Coast Guard's standard for being under the influence has two numbers and a list. Point zero eight for somebody operating a recreational vessel. Point zero four for somebody operating anything else. And then, with no number attached at all, a description of what impairment looks like from the outside.

That third limb is the one worth carrying. Manner, disposition, speech, muscular movement, general appearance, behaviour. Six things, observable, requiring no equipment and no confrontation. The regulation is about the person driving the boat rather than the person in the front of it, and it does not reach a client at all. What it supplies is a list somebody thought hard about, which is more than most guides have when the question arises at nine in the morning. This is not legal advice. What binds a particular boat turns on tonnage, passenger numbers and the licence held, so check the current requirements against the Coast Guard's own guidance and whatever your state agency publishes. Companion pieces are collected at the ops playbooks hub.

What is the professional threshold?

Half the recreational one, and most guides do not know that.

Section 95.020 of Title 33 provides that an individual is under the influence when operating a recreational vessel with a blood alcohol concentration of point zero eight percent or more by weight, or when operating a vessel other than a recreational vessel with an alcohol concentration of point zero four percent by weight or more.

The second figure is half the first, and the reason is the passengers.

Section 95.015 defines who counts as operating, covering an individual with an essential role in the operation of a recreational vessel underway, including navigation or control of propulsion, and covering a crewmember, pilot or watchstander on a vessel that is not recreational.

Section 95.025 provides that where a state has established a blood alcohol level by statute, that level applies within the state's boundaries instead of the federal recreational figure.

Part 95 is carried on the eCFR.

Which side of that line a guide boat falls on is untangled by the captain's licence piece.

Stanley Gresham, TX

What is the observation standard?

Six things, and it is the most useful list in the part.

Section 95.020(c) provides that an individual operating any vessel is under the influence where the effect of the intoxicants consumed on the person's manner, disposition, speech, muscular movement, general appearance or behaviour is apparent by observation.

No threshold, no instrument, and six named dimensions.

What makes it valuable to a guide is that it converts a vague impression into something you can actually check, and checking is what makes a difficult decision defensible to yourself later.

Muscular movement is the one people overlook and the one that matters most in a boat, since somebody unsteady standing on a bank is somebody who cannot be stood up in a drift boat.

Speech and general appearance are the earliest signals and the easiest to explain away, which is exactly why having them on a written list helps.

The whole point of the list is that it exists before the morning it is needed.

Everything else the first hour has to establish belongs to the morning-of piece.

FishNLA, LA

What happens after a casualty?

The question gets asked formally, and refusing to answer is itself evidence.

Section 185.210 of Title 46 requires, for each marine casualty that must be reported, the owner, agent, master or person in charge to determine whether there is any evidence of alcohol or drug use by individuals directly involved.

The written report must identify those individuals and specify the method used to obtain the evidence, such as personal observation of the individual or chemical testing.

Personal observation is named as a method, which is why the six-element list matters operationally as well as personally.

Paragraph (c) requires an entry in the official logbook where one is carried, with the individual informed of the entry and the entry witnessed by a second person.

Paragraph (d) provides that a refusal to submit to or cooperate in a timely chemical test, when directed by an authorised officer or by the person in charge, must be noted and will be admissible as evidence in any administrative proceeding.

Section 185.212 requires a marine employer whose vessel is involved in a casualty likely to become a serious marine incident to comply with the chemical testing requirements in subchapter A.

What insurance does with all of that is examined in the insurance claims piece.

Where should the line actually be drawn?

At the observation standard, applied to the client rather than to yourself.

The threshold the regulation sets for an operator is not the threshold worth applying to a passenger, because a passenger's impairment matters at a different point.

What matters for a passenger is balance, judgment and the ability to follow an instruction quickly, which is closer to the observation limb than to any number.

Applied that way, the practical test is whether this person can stand up in a moving boat, put a life jacket on unaided, and do what you say the first time you say it.

Somebody who fails any of those three should not be in the boat, regardless of how much they have had or how they got that way.

Framing it as those three questions rather than as a judgment about drunkenness is also what makes the conversation survivable, since it is about capability rather than character.

The briefing that establishes the instruction-following expectation is covered in the safety briefing piece.

What is said at the ramp?

One sentence, no diagnosis, and no negotiation.

The failing version is any construction containing the words drunk or too much, because those are accusations and they produce an argument you cannot win in front of a group.

The working version describes the requirement rather than the person: I need everybody steady on their feet in the boat today, and we are not there, so we are not going out.

Which is a statement about the boat, delivered without judgment, and it is much harder to argue with than an assessment of somebody's condition.

It is also honest, since the requirement is genuinely the reason and the person's state is only relevant because of it.

Saying it to the group rather than to the individual is usually right, because the group will handle the individual and you will not have to.

What must not follow is a negotiation about coffee, an hour's delay, or half a day, all of which are ways of taking the risk more slowly.

The wider taxonomy of hard conversations is laid out by the difficult clients piece.

What about drinking during the day?

Decide the policy in the off-season and put it on the confirmation.

Beer in a cooler is normal on a great many waters and the question is not whether it is allowed but where the limit sits and who says so.

A policy stated at booking is a policy; a limit imposed at two in the afternoon is a confrontation.

The workable positions are that alcohol is not carried at all, that a stated quantity is fine, or that it is fine until you say otherwise, and only the first two are actually policies.

Whichever applies goes in the confirmation email in one line, because the client who is going to be a problem is the one who did not know.

What also belongs there is the consequence, being that the day ends if it becomes unsafe, which nobody objects to reading in advance and everybody objects to hearing at two.

State and local law may restrict this independently of anything you decide, so read what your own agency publishes for those waters before setting a policy.

That one line belongs in the email built by the confirmation workflow piece.

Should the guide drink at all?

Not on a working day, and the point zero four figure is why.

The professional threshold is half the recreational one, and it is low enough that a single drink at lunch is a meaningful fraction of it for many people.

Beyond the number, the observation limb has no threshold at all, which means the question can be decided on appearance regardless of what any instrument would have said.

There is also a client-facing dimension, since a guide holding a beer has given away the ability to say anything about anybody else's drinking for the rest of the day.

Which is the practical reason as much as the regulatory one: the policy is unenforceable by somebody who is not keeping it.

Accepting a beer at the take-out after the boat is out and the clients are gone is a different question and a matter of ordinary judgment.

The debrief that ends the day properly is set out in the debrief piece.

Who is the risk actually to?

The other people in the boat, more than the person drinking.

An impaired angler is at obvious risk themselves, and that is not the part that changes a guide's calculation.

What changes it is that a boat is a small shared space in moving water, and one person unsteady on their feet is a hazard to everybody sitting near them.

Which reframes the decision usefully, because a guide weighing whether to refuse one client is really weighing whether to expose the other two to them.

It also changes the conversation, since it is easier to say we need everybody steady than to say you are not steady.

The wider point is the same one the safety orientation rules make, which is that the master's duties run to all passengers rather than to the one who is causing the difficulty.

Anybody who has watched somebody fall against a person holding a fly rod understands why the geometry matters more than the individual.

What about the person who is not drunk but not right?

The observation limb covers that too, and it is worth using.

Alcohol is the obvious case and it is not the only one, since exhaustion, altitude, medication and illness all present through the same six dimensions.

A client who flew in overnight, drove three hours and has not eaten can fail the standing-up test without having had a drink.

Which is why the practical version is written as capability questions rather than as a drinking question, since the questions work regardless of cause and require no theory about why.

It is also a great deal easier to raise, because asking somebody whether they have eaten and slept is a normal thing to ask at a ramp.

Where the cause is fixable, the fix is often twenty minutes and food, which is a completely different outcome from a cancelled day.

Where it is not fixable, the answer is the same as it would have been, and the conversation was easier for never having been about alcohol.

Does a waiver change any of this?

Not in the way people assume, and relying on one is the error.

Guides reach for the signed document as a reason a decision does not have to be made, which reverses what the document is for.

Whatever a waiver does or does not do in a given state is a question for a lawyer there, and the answer varies enormously.

What is not in doubt is that a decision to launch with an impaired passenger is a decision, and no piece of paper makes it a different one.

The insurance dimension is separate again and worth understanding before it matters rather than afterwards.

Reading your own policy for what it says about intoxication is an hour in February that nobody spends.

Verify the current terms with your broker and read the exclusions rather than the summary, since that is where the answer lives.

What if it becomes apparent mid-trip?

Change the day rather than ending it, if changing it is enough.

The mid-trip version is harder than the ramp version because the person is already in the boat and the options are worse.

What is usually available is a reduction in exposure rather than a termination: off the water at the next access, a bank stretch instead of a float, or an early finish framed as the fishing rather than the person.

Life jackets on for the rest of the day is a reasonable and unremarkable instruction that costs nothing and materially changes the risk.

Where the situation is beyond that, the answer is the nearest take-out, which is the same answer the hazardous conditions rules give for weather.

What does not work is continuing while watching, because watching is not a mitigation and the day gets longer rather than safer.

Deciding in advance where every stretch can be exited is what makes any of this possible.

Where those exit points get worked out is covered in the contingency piece.

What gets written down?

The observation, in the six words the regulation uses.

Where a trip is refused or curtailed, one line goes in the record that day, and the useful form is the regulation's own vocabulary.

Unsteady on his feet at the ramp, slurred speech, could not fasten a life jacket, is a description in the terms 95.020(c) uses and it is exactly what somebody would later want to know.

What is not useful is a conclusion, since he was drunk is a judgment and the description is evidence.

The distinction matters because 185.210 itself names personal observation as a method of obtaining evidence and requires the method to be stated.

Where an entry is required in an official logbook, that section also requires the individual to be told and the entry to be witnessed, which is a fair procedure worth copying informally.

Telling somebody you have made a note is uncomfortable and it is a great deal less uncomfortable than producing one they never knew about.

The record this attaches to is described in the debrief piece.

Where does this usually go wrong?

Six ways, and the negotiation is the worst.

Agreeing to wait an hour, or to a half day, or to coffee first, all of which take the same risk at a slower pace.

Making it about the person rather than about the requirement, which produces an argument in front of a group.

Having no stated policy on alcohol during the day, so any limit imposed later is a confrontation rather than a rule.

Holding a drink yourself, which forfeits the standing to say anything to anybody else.

Continuing while watching, when watching changes nothing about the risk and only extends the exposure.

And writing down a conclusion instead of a description, so the record proves nothing.

The unimpaired version of the same conversation belongs to the difficult clients piece.

What is the working protocol?

Three questions at the ramp, one sentence, no negotiation.

Can this person stand unaided, fasten a life jacket unaided, and follow an instruction the first time.

Where the answer to any is no, the day does not start, and the sentence is about the boat rather than about them.

State the alcohol policy at booking, in one line in the confirmation, with the consequence stated alongside it.

Do not drink on a working day, because the professional threshold is half the recreational one and because the policy is unenforceable by somebody not keeping it.

Mid-trip, reduce exposure rather than watching: jackets on, bank instead of boat, nearest access.

Record the observation in the regulation's own terms, being manner, speech, muscular movement and appearance, and never a conclusion.

The statute behind the vessel rules is 46 U.S.C. 2302, and the most recent amendment to part 95 was published at 90 FR 52876.

The wider incident record is described in the insurance claims piece.