Meh, he could just go rent something, no licence required. It's an absolutely insane loophole.
This was a boat we rented in the 90's which I spent a week running up and down the trent with a bunch of friends.
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Almost 60 feet long and it had to be at least a 15' beam, Single Volvo Penta sterndrive with maybe 150hp. All steel and weighed eleventy thousand pounds. It was a bear. At least I grew up with boats and had some skills, but anyone who has ever spent any time on the Trent and had the pleasure of sharing any tight spaces with a rental houseboat, or a rental pontoon, or really, a rental boat of any sort knows what goes on. And yeah, no licence required (and rental boats still to this day don't require a licence) and the "training" consisted of about 2 minutes explaining how to start the engine and what the different levers and buttons did.