The owner and charter operator for the megayacht Golden Touch II may have to pay nearly $41,500 in fines. The U.S. Coast Guard halted a charter aboard in Miami over the weekend after finding several violations.
According to the Coast Guard, crew from its Coast Guard Station Miami unit boarded Golden Touch II on Sunday. The 147-foot (45-meter) megayacht was near Nixon Beach. Forty-seven people were onboard, far exceeding the number of paying passengers permitted by certification. Furthermore, the Coast Guard says, Golden Touch II did not have a valid certificate of inspection, required for commercially registered vessels in the United States. In addition, the megayacht did not have a valid stability letter. The final violation: failure to have a drug and alcohol testing program for her crew.
Several yacht-charter and brokerage websites list Golden Touch II’s weekly rate starting at $145,000. As a result of Sunday’s violations, which the Coast Guard terms an “illegal passenger for hire operation,” the maximum penalties could total $41,456.
“Tragically, people have lost their lives on illegal charters,” comments Capt. Landonn Allen, chief of Coast Guard 7th District’s prevention department. “The unsafe atmospheres that these types of companies and unlicensed captains, who knowingly engage in illegal activity, create on their boats show a complete disregard for passenger safety and have been responsible for multiple deaths in Florida alone.”
Allen specifically points to two recent cases. The first is that of Miami Vice, a 95-footer (29-meter) where a paying passenger was killed in April. The death resulted from the captain engaging the engines while swimmers were in the water. Both the owner and the captain, who is additionally unlicensed, face charges. In the second case, which occurred in March 2017, the 72-footer (22-meter) Jaguar had 15 people onboard for a charter in Tampa Bay. This exceeded the permitted six-person paying-passenger capacity. One passenger drowned, as did a member of the charter company who was onboard and tried to save him. The investigation is still going on.
“We cannot stress enough to anyone looking to charter a boat to verify the captain’s license and safety of the vessel,” Allen concludes.
The now-defunct Sensation Yachts built Golden Touch II in 2006. She completed a 14-month refit last year.
thomas poster
What could be the motivation to run illegal charters? Greed? No drug testing on this vessel? What’s going on in Florida?