BoatUS pushes recreational boating safety at congressional roundtable

BoatUS brought recreational boaters’ concerns into a House roundtable in Washington, D.C., pressing lawmakers and maritime leaders to focus on safety systems, navigation standards, and new technology that actually works on the water. The July 21 session, “Intersecting Courses: Maritime Safety Regulation and Technology,” put the organization’s message in front of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee.

The subcommittee, chaired by Mike Ezell, announced the roundtable on July 18 and said it would bring together members of Congress, the Coast Guard, and industry representatives to discuss marine safety programs. The session was held at 10:00 a.m. ET in Room 2167 of the Rayburn House Office Building. For BoatUS, the setting mattered because it placed recreational boaters in a federal policy discussion that usually gets dominated by broader transportation and industry concerns.

BoatUS says it is the nation’s leading advocacy, services and safety group for recreational boaters, with more than 740,000 members. That scale gives the organization a direct line to the kinds of problems sailors and powerboat owners run into every season, from broken gear and dead batteries to fuel issues and grounding incidents. The group says it provides 24-hour on-water towing, jump-starts, fuel delivery, and soft ungroundings, which puts it close to the practical side of boating that rules and standards often miss.

The policy pressure point for DIY sailors is clear: the roundtable centered on the overlap between equipment, training, and compliance. BoatUS framed the discussion around the need for systems that work for real-world boaters, not just regulators or large commercial operators. That includes the electronics many skippers now depend on for navigation, passage planning, and collision avoidance, along with the installation, upkeep, and crew knowledge needed to use them safely.

BoatUS Foundation courses fit that same theme. The foundation says it offers a free state- and NASBLA-approved boater safety course, along with other online courses for beginner and experienced boaters. Those programs matter in a world where safety compliance is increasingly tied to what people know before they cast off and how well they maintain the equipment already on board.

The roundtable also landed in the middle of a broader 2026 push on boating policy. The U.S. Coast Guard and NASBLA signed a memorandum of agreement to strengthen their partnership on recreational boating safety. Earlier in the year, the National Marine Manufacturers Association held its American Boating Congress in Washington from May 4 to 6 at The InterContinental, The Wharf, while the Marine Retailers Association of America joined a bipartisan Capitol Hill briefing on federal boating access policy and infrastructure investments supporting public access to U.S. waterways.

Taken together, those moves show recreational boating groups pressing Congress on safety, access, and the cost of keeping boats ready to sail. BoatUS’s seat at the table pointed to a simple demand: if new rules and new technology are coming, they need to account for the owners who install the gear, maintain the boat, and live with the consequences when something goes wrong offshore or at the dock.