Clearing In and Out

When you arrive in a new country in a sailboat, you have to raise the “Q” flag, which is a yellow flag, on the starboard (right) side of the boat. This shows your intention to clear in to the country, and you are allowed a little time between when you arrive and when you go to the customs office; although you should go there as soon as possible. So if you arrive in the late evening, you can stay on your boat and sleep, and then go to customs when you get up the next morning. If you arrive during their opening hours, you are expected to get there the same day.

The procedures vary greatly from country to country. In the EU, since we have a boat flagged in a Swedish country, we never had to clear in or out of any of the countries. The only place we did clearance on our trip to Las Palmas was Guernsey, and that was just dropping paperwork into a mailbox. Sailing from Las Palmas, we were officially cleared out of the EU, and we received a stamped exit paper to show that we were good to leave.

Arriving in Saint Lucia, the ARC had detailed instructions on how to clear in, so it was very straightforward. The only thing missing in our instructions was that we had to take the exit paper from Spain with us – very important – and we now know that we have to bring exit papers from the prior country to be able to enter the next one. Each country is slightly different in how they handle checking in and out. The English-speaking islands we have visited have used a computer system “Sail-Clear” to allow us to input all the ship data, making the entry an exit processes efficient.

In Saint Lucia, we had to fill out a health form, a leftover from Covid. After that we cleared customs, then immigration, and finally we had to stop by the port authority with a copy of our paperwork; but they were all in the same offices. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines only had customs and immigration, but each of them had their own fee as opposed to paying customs like in Saint Lucia. So far, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has been the most expensive country to check in to. However, we still haven’t been far north, and we hear that steep entry fees are in our future.

Grenada had customs and immigration in one shared office where we checked both in and out, on Carriacou. The have a bad reputation among sailors for being unfriendly in the Carriacou office, but they were efficient on the way in. On exiting, they went out of their way to squeeze us in as there was a larger yacht with 25 people onboard and they took care of us first. So we can say positive things about Carriacou / Grenada customs.

Dominica was also pretty straightforward – one stop for both customs and immigration, and a very small fee. Seeing how the country is struggling and in need of support, I think they could raise their entry fees for yachts, I think that as long as they keep them lower than the other southern neighbors, it won’t make any difference. They also allowed us to clear in and out at the same time, we got a two-week pass, which was really nice to not have to go check out.

The French islands have been a bit different. Martinique only charged 5€ for check-in, which is a really small fee. They are not on Sail-Clear, but they had a French computer system that we could type in our information ourselves, then they printed it and stamped it. If you have never used a French computer, they keyboard has several keys in different places. So as a person who types by feel, I messed up several times trying to enter data. Magnus saved me by pointing out the new locations for basic letters.

We did not have to check out of Martinique either; we tried, but since we had an exit date (guesstimate at the time of check-in) on our entry form, they just said we could leave whenever we wanted up until that date. They were also very relaxed, they didn’t look at any of our passports or ships papers, they just looked to see that we had filled in all the required spaces. Since you don’t check into the EU – the French islands are not part of Schengen – it is only an issue for the island. In all my years of travelling, I have never checked in somewhere where they didn’t at least compare the passport number to the passport and looked at your picture.

Guadeloupe was a very French-Caribbean experience. We motored in calm seas to the island of Marie-Galante, where they official entry is listed as in the port of Grand Bourg. Upon arriving we tried to hail the harbormaster, but they didn’t speak English and stopped responding. So we took ourselves into the harbor, set anchor, and tried talking to the other yachts to see if any knew how to check in. No luck, so we exited the harbor and walked to the ferry terminal to see if there was customs there. Fortunately, we met a kind woman who explained that the customs office was a short walk away.

The customs office was all shuttered when we arrived, although our guidebooks said that they should open at 2pm after lunch. We walked over to the tourist office, and were informed that lunch was actually until 2:30pm, so we found a nice bar to sit in and had a beer while we waited for lunch hour to end. At the appropriate time, we went back to customs, only to find that it was still shuttered. There was no information posted anywhere with contact numbers or anything, so we went back to the tourist office.

Fortunately, the woman in the tourist office was really helpful. She called the customs officer for us, and we found out that apparently customs closes for the weekend at lunch on Thursday. That meant that we had to get ourselves to Saint Louis, the next town up the coast, to check in. Since the French are so relaxed about customs and immigration, the office in Saint Louis was also closed for the day by 4pm, so we motored up to Saint Louis and stayed on the boat and checked in first thing Friday morning.

Checking in to Saint Louis was unique in that we checked in via a small art store, not with a customs or immigration agent. The woman was really nice, but had to fill out a form by hand with all the data because they didn’t have a computer system. She did however look at our passports, and also took only a small fee for clearing in.

I never expected that the country with manual input would be France, or that all the other countries so far would be part of a computerized network that is quite efficient. Just goes to show, stereotypes can be really misleading.

Fair winds and following seas to you all!