[MidLandOne]

I refer to the main boat as the "ship" for convenience and the following is slanted towards international practice as I have found it to be generally officially accepted for pleasure, commercial and naval vessel operations (naval vessels often being immune to regulation but they generally follow accepted/regulated practices).

Originally Posted by PatrickS

...1. Can a VHF hand-held radio which is licensed for a particular boat be used elsewhere than on the boat for which the license is issued?

E.g. can one crewmember use the hand-held while in a dinghy or from a dock or the shore, to communicate with another crewmember in the boat, e.g. when transiting to/from the boat, or when performing tasks such as setting a second anchor, etc. ?

Or can one use a VHF hand-held radio on the shore or dock to communicate with a vessel on the water?

You can use the ship's handheld VHF's on any of its tenders, dinghies, seaboats, or whatever they happen to be. The communications must be of ship's business and can be with any other vessel. Ships do this all the time during the likes of lifeboat exercises, etc.

You cannot use it from shore remote from the tender, etc eg one cannot call from the local supermarket even if the communications are regarding ship's stores. In most softly enforced places probably no one is going to worry if you use the radio on the dock while directly beside the dinghy as long as is strictly for ships business.

One should be careful in some places using the ships radio if the ship or tender is berthed, telephone communications are available and the message in the communications is for a third party. For example, I know of a case on a berthed ship (that being a big ship) where there was a fire on board and the crew called a shore station requesting a fire brigade turnout. The crew were later advised officially that as they had telephone communications available that use of VHF was not considered correct, they should have used the telephone calling the county's emergency services number (ie 999, 000, 111, whatever).

Originally Posted by PatrickS

2. How does one identify oneself if/when using a licensed hand-held VHF radio elsewhere than on the boat for which the license is issued?

You identify yourself as the tender, dinghy, seaboat of the mothership and use the motherships callsign if required. For example, one navy I know when operating off the mothership identify themselves as "{ship's name} seaboat". If on a vessel other than those then the next question applies.

Originally Posted by PatrickS

3. If one is a guest aboard another vessel A, different from the vessel B for which the hand-held radio is licensed, and one wishes to use one's own hand-held radio aboard vessel A, and one is not acting as captain or crew of the other vessel A nor does the communication concern the other vessel A, but is between crew of the vessel B and the licensed vessel B, does one identify themselves with the name/callsign of the vessel A they are a guest on, or with the name/callsign of the vessel B for which they hold the license?...

The licence does not belong to the radio, it belongs to the ship. If you or someone else uses your ship's handheld on another ship "A" (or on their tender) you use ship "A's" callsign and ship name. If the ship "A" that you are a guest on is flagged or domiciled in another nation to your own vessel then you cannot use your handheld yourself unless you have an operators' certificate issued by or accepted by ship "A's" country (this is not likely to be strictly enforced by most nations with soft enforcement if a pleasure vessel as long as one does have a licence from somewhere).

Originally Posted by PatrickS

...What if the vessel A has no ship's radio license?

If vessel A has no ship's licence your handheld cannot be used on board it or its tenders, etc. But your handheld can be used on any other vessel that does have a ship's licence or on the tender of that ship using that ships callsign and name. It can be used on ship A if for an emergency threatening life or property even if ship "A" does not have a licence. But in most jurisdictions a marine VHF radio capable of transmitting cannot be carried on a vessel that does not have a callsign - in my own country's case that seems to be softly regulated recognising that as long as the radio is only used for emergency communications it adds to dafety.