BoatUS

BoatUS, formally the Boat Owners Association of the United States, was founded in 1966 by Richard Schwartz, prompted by a 1963 incident when a friend's boat was cited by the Coast Guard for safety defects, even though no federal law at the time held boat manufacturers liable for those defects. Schwartz built the organization around boater advocacy, and that early campaigning fed directly into the Federal Boat Safety Act, which President Nixon signed in 1971 and which Schwartz had helped draft; the law gave the Coast Guard authority to regulate boat manufacturers for the first time. Through the 1980s, BoatUS ran a multi-year campaign that succeeded in repealing a federal boating 'user fee' tax between 1982 and 1992. In 1987, after federal budget cuts eliminated the Coast Guard's on-water towing service, BoatUS launched its own towing operation, later rebranded TowBoatUS in 2016 and now describing itself as North America's largest on-water assistance provider, with hundreds of response vessels across the U.S. Alongside towing, membership includes marina and gear discounts, an insurance program, and a bimonthly magazine. The organization moved into a new Springfield, Virginia headquarters in 2018.