>Do any of you all have a "formal" or "informal" guest policy. Yes. With the exception of a handful of long-time friends we do not allow or invite anyone on board, period. Not to travel with us and not to visit with (on board) at the dock. None of the longtime friends we occasionally take on the boat have small children so that is not an issue. If it was an issue we would not allow children on the boat as a general rule. As far as the friends we take on the boat we gave them the head instructions or a refresher course bluntly. How to operate the toilets and nothing goes down them that you haven't eaten first with the exception of toilet paper and you'd better use that VERY sparingly. We carry a fair amount of water on our boat but we've told our friends that showers and whatnot need to be kept real short. Our Navy-style shower wand has an on-off button on it so it's very easy to take a shower with very little water usage. Same thing with electricity--- our 1973 boat is minimally batteried although we doubled the house battery capacity last year--- so we tell guests to keep the number of lights on in their cabin at night to a minimum, preferably just one. Some of our friends have dogs and when they come with us their dog is welcome to come too (we have a dog so it would be a bit hypocritical to take ours and not allow theirs). We've never had a problem with dogs on board. Cats are not allowed on our boat, although none of the people we take on the boat has one. We require everyone to wear a life jacket when on deck underway and we have spare self-inflating Mustang vest-type PFDs for our guests. These are comfortable and after awhile our friends don't even realize they're wearing them. I have stated in the past that we are not social boaters. We got into boating for the exact opposite reason. So right now the number of people we will invite to go with us on the boat is exactly eleven. Three couples from here, one from France, one from England, and one bachelor. There is another couple with their own boat who we boat with frequently but they're the only ones. We will take only one couple (or one person) as guests on any given trip. Since the only people who would ever be on the boat with us are long time, very compatible friends, we have no issues with worrying about when or how to politely ask them to leave because we never have anyone on the boat who would prompt this dilemma. All this sounds harsh maybe, but between my job, my own writing projects, and all the other demands on our time, our boating time is limited even though we use the boat year round. So we are not willing to compromise the time we have to spend on the boat by dealing with casual visitors off the dock or other boats. ______________________________ C. Marin Faure GB36-403 (grp) "La Perouse" Bellingham, Washington