US Coast Guard visits the Volunteer Princess

We just celebrated our 4th anniversary of the Volunteer Princess cruising the Tennessee River in Knoxville, TN.  While it's exciting that we have been in business for 4 years, as captain of the yacht, I know this means it is getting closer to Coast Guard Inspection time.  Since we run a commercial cruising operation, the Volunteer Princess is a Coast Guard Inspected Vessel.  This means that each year the Volunteer Princess is inspected by the United States Coast Guard.  They check everything:  life jackets, flares, first aid kit, fuel tanks, fire extinguishers, fire pumps, main engines, generators, steering equipment, documentation, licenses, safety equipment, etc.  They have us conduct our safety drills including man overboard and our fire drill.  We practice these drills monthly to make sure we know what to do in the event of an emergency.  

Even though we have been through this four times already, this is still a very stressful time for me because they could basically shut us down if there was anything wrong with the yacht.  In the previous years, they have found just minor things such as some rope that needed to be replaced and some first aid materials had expired, which we fixed immediately.  It's kind of like the health department- they have to find something.  Well we were inspected May 18, 2010 and I am very happy to report that they did not find one single thing wrong.  Everything was perfect.  Even our first inspection they found something, and the yacht was brand new!  After the Coast Guard finished our inspection, they were off to the Star of Knoxville to follow up on some things that they found wrong during their inspection.

And the Winner is.......

Knoxville Tourism Alliance presented the 2010 Pauly Awards on May 6, 2010 to local businesses and Volunteer Princess Cruises won the award for Museum & Attraction of the Year.  This was a great feeling for all of us because it feels like all of our hard work is starting to pay off.