OUPV Training in Onalaska

Capt. Bob Parker and his assistant instuctor are holding OUPV Training in Onalaska, for the first three weekends in December. The sessions will be from 6pm to 10 pm on each Friday, and then from 8:30am to 4:30pm, on each of the saturdays and Sundays. The test will be administered on the third Sunday. Cost is $875.00 for the training and materials. Rooms are on your own. It will be held at the Stony Creek Inn and Conference Center. I spoke with Rudy this evening, one of the instructors coordinating this session, and he indicated that there are openings for up to 10 more. Call him with any questions or if you wish to sign up. A deposit is required. Rudy’s number is 414-559-4203.

What is OUPV training?

Let’s see if I can answer that in a short version.

Anyone that captains a boat for hire on Federally managed waters by law, must have a US Coast Guard certificaton. There’s generally two types that we talk about (there are others that go by tonnage). The OUPV will allow a person that hold this certification to guide for hire on any federally controled waterway in the US…excluding the Great Lakes. the other license is what is know as the “six pack”. It allows the bearer to boat for hire on generally one pool on the sippi, the St Croix, or the Minnesota River.

Hope that answers your question.

OUPV stands for “Operator of Uninspected Passenger Vessels” This is typically issued for 6 passengers maximun and hence the nickname “6 pack”.

This can be issued for a certain geographical area such as pool 4 and would be called a limited license. There are also Great Lakes ratings as well as Western Rivers which the Miss falls into, and Remote rivers. Depending on your experience the OUPV can be issued to allow operation on all US waters up to 200 miles offshore.

For those of you who are contemplating getting your license you should look at getting a full rather than a limited license if possible.

As kwkfsh indicated, the 6-pak is the full captains license, good for waters you’ve shown the required experience on. Here in the midwest, it would qualify you for our inland waters, termed Western Rivers, such as the Ole Miss, Rock River, Wolf River and connecting lakes, etc. If you have the necessary experience on a Great Lake, the license would be for The Western Rivers and Great Lakes, which is what I obtained. Yet another category would be for coastal waters, both inland and off-shore, and again would require the necessay experience in those waters.

The Limited OUPV, sometimes termed the Recreational license, or launch-tender, has less experience requirements, and less training, but places further limits on the waters you are licensed to operate in for hire.
As there are a myriad of requirements/restrictions for these various licenses, you can go to the USGC website, or use a search engine to find sites for Captains license, and all this stuff is on there.

Thanks for all of the answers. Now I know.

Just wanted to bring this back to the top, in case there’s anyone out there looking to go for the Captain’s license.

At one time I was very interersted in taking one of these courses. Now that I see the price tag, I guess I don’t really need to take this