Has there ever been or when did it change that Master of Towing must be more than 200 GT?
Your question isn’t very clear. Do you want a Master of Towing restricted to less than 200 tons for some reason?
To my knowledge neither Master / Mate of Towing nor OUTV have ever been offered with a tonnage limit. Some of those licenses exist because when they started the OUTV license people who has experience running less than 100 ton tugs on a 100 ton Master were given an OUTV 100 GRT license. IIRC, other than being grandfathered there has never been a way to get a tonnage restricted OUTV or Master / Mate of Towing.
Maybe what he is looking for is a Commercial Assistance Towing Endorsement.
The Student was looking to work on getting his Master of towing on a Harbor Tug that was less then 100 GT inland
That doesn’t clarify your question at all.
So the question was can you get a limited license (less than 200GT) Master of Towing? Has there ever been a limited Master of towing?
No. Why would anyone want to anyway?
there is a harbor tug that he works on 68 feet 89 GT
Yes. There is an limited master of towing license. It is limited to a local inland route approved by the local OCMI and it is limited to 200 T or less.
46 CFR 11.464 C
Here is a link to the checklist:
Yes, I forgot about the limited route license. I was thinking geographically unrestricted with a tonnage limit, which doesn’t exist except for those grandfathered to it.
I don’t know why anyone would want that but whatever.
I don’t understand what that has to do with the question. Does he not think he can get a normal Master of Towing working there or something?
There is also a limited towing license for harbor tugs. They don’t get the full TOAR signed off for towing by pushing ahead or alongside because they never do it. The companies really like this because if their guys have a limited towing license, they can’t leave the company and get on pushboats, which pays better.