Video: Georgia Boat Registration and Numbering Requirements

Rob

When you go up to somebody on a boat ramp, maybe that’s a new boater, what do you tell them about registration?

Corporal Julian Wilkins

OK, one of the first things they’ve got to do—got to get it registered. If it’s mechanically propelled, which means has any type of trawling motor or outboard motor, that’s what we call mechanical propulsion—if it has that, we require them to get it registered. You can get it registered by going online or you can do it by phone, either way. When you get it registered, it’s good for three years. The registrations go for three years, and they expire on the last day of the month the owner was born. That’s when they’d expire; in three years. The other thing is when you want to put it on the vessel, you’ve got to display it on the forward half of the vessel, and it has to be in 3-inch or larger block letters. That’s what the numbers have to be displayed in.

Rob

So when people get a registration, they get a number. And do they have to go out and get the numbers, or do they actually get the numbers in the mail?

Corporal Wilkins

All you get in the mail are the decals. You have to go out and buy the numbers—the letters. That’s why—

Rob

OK. So make sure you get big numbers.

Corporal Wilkins

That’s right. That’s why it’s important to get the right size numbers when you go buy them. And they have to have a space between the lettering, but you do have to display them on the forward half of the vessel, and the decal goes in front of the preaffixed letters and left to right.

Rob

Why is it important to have it there on the front?

Corporal Wilkins

People put them everywhere. They’ll put them on top of the hull where you can’t even see it oftentimes. Sometimes they’ll put it in rear of the vessel or they’ll put it under the hull where it bows under. You can’t even see it when you’re running down the lake. And what we do, we turn around and stop a vessel like that, and it causes unnecessary inconvenience. You know, because we’re stopping them thinking it’s an unregistered vessel. And once they get it corrected, obviously, you know, they won’t have that problem.

Rob

OK. So the idea is, make sure you display them in big letters—

Corporal Wilkins

That’s right.

Rob

—on the side of the boat on both sides toward the front.

Corporal Wilkins

That’s right. Pretty simple, sir. Yes it is.