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just my 2 cents
As a former law enforcement officer. I will tell you how I read it.
So your friends on the cat have.
1. Failed to abide by the law by properly registering there boat.
2. Unlawfully supplied false information to law enforcement officers. To purposely try to avoid the registration laws.
When we run across a person purposely giving out false information its a huge huge red flag. As a general guideline people who provide false information to law enforcement officers, and the general public are criminals, and have something to hide. Clearly they thought they were above or an exception to the laws of your state. This in itself does not give officers a good feeling about about your intentions as a law abiding citizen. They were probably inclined to give them the max tickets/penalties to try to impress upon the citizen the importance of abiding by laws, not just the ones they like.
And they may have thought like I do. Some one would have to be drunk to be on a tiny cat learning to sail in a congested area with tons of drunken power boaters zooming around. As you described
Obviously the teenagers in the ancient runabout had the wherewith all to properly register there boat,carry proper equipment, and not lie to the officers. If they were drunk they should have been ticketed too. But teenagers certainly do not have to be drunk to have a good time or be rowdy
I certainly do not know your officers. But I can almost certainly say I am sure they do not have some sort of grudge out for you or your family. I do not think they go out daily and pick on just sailboats. I think most officers are nice and courteous to law abiding citizens. One of the hardest things we do as officers is give people tickets for having a good time out on the water on a sat afternoon, we all absolutely hate hate to it. But when we come across a citizen who, not only is breaking the law, but providing false information in an attempt to skirt the laws, and has the attitude to call us "seapigs" it makes it little easier to write that ticket.
Its 10$ to register a non motorized sailboat in AL right.
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