If you started building a boat 50 feet or over after July 1, 2013, its design and construction has to be under the review and periodic monitoring of a classification society, such as American Bureau of Shipping or Det Norske Veritas. 

That's going to jack the price of the boat up at least $250,000. It's been assumed that one way to avoid the extra cost is to utilize a keel built before the July 1 deadline. Some boatbuilders constructed two or three keels with that in mind, earmarking some of the keels for a particular boat while the others would be sold at a later time.

The 2012 Coast Guard and Marine Transportation Act did say that building a keel prior to July 1, 2013, qualifies as having begun building a boat, thus avoiding the classification process and cost. But here's the rub: if the keel was built for your boat you are pretty much in the clear and can wait two, three maybe four years to build the rest of the boat.

But if you've gone into a boatyard after July 1 and bought a keel built before the deadline, thinking it will allow you to escape having to class the boat, you are probably wrong and will still need to have the boat classed. Basically you just bought a bunch of steel or fiberglass, but it's not a keel, at least from the Coast Guard's standpoint.

"When the keel is laid, the common sense interpretation would have to be that the keel is identified with a vessel," says Jack Kemerer, chief of the Fishing Vessel Safety Division in the Coast Guard's Office of Commercial Vessel Compliance. 

"Just saying we cut steel June 13, 2013, before the deadline, unless you can identify the keel with a particular vessel, it's probably not going to be accepted," Kemerer says. "It should be classed."