Clearing the yacht and its crew into and out of the Islands… a little longer than usual, but that’s bureaucracy for you 

The Caribbean islands’ officials manage their borders in a variety of ways, but all have their own, slightly different idiosyncrasies. There are pilot guides and online forum to guide yacht captains but it’s a lottery as to what you’ll actually find, and as you’ll see below, a game that has to be played if you want to get over this bureaucratic barrier that exists between you and your crew, and the rum punches.

All the islands are quite small; you can often cruise around them in a day or two. If you aim to see as much and as many of them as possible during your cruise through the Caribbean, inevitably you end up moving between islands every few days and treading the tortuous and ambiguous path through border control quite frequently.

The French islands, for the most part, are the easiest to clear in and out from (I wouldn’t have expected that!). In Guadeloupe for example, the ‘formalities’ are all carried out on a PC in a shop down the road from ‘Catherine’s Bar’ (that’s the one in the UK tv series Death in Paradise). The form takes about five minutes to complete, requires our ships registration papers and the exit document I got from the last Island we visited, plus passports of all crew. The lovely lady in the shop checks you’ve filled the form in correctly, takes her €5 commission, and we are all checked-in and all legal to continue to rum punches. Checking out is the same – complete the form and get the all-important emigration form for the next island. Cumulatively this took about 20 minutes when we were there.

Contrast this with some other Islands where bureaucracy has taken a proper hold; I’m sad to say they probably learned all they know about this from the British at some point in their history. Dealing with this kind of system requires a whole new level of obsequiousness on my part, or I’ll get absolutely nowhere. 

First queue to see the person from Customs. They address you as captain, you address her as Ma’am, him as Sir. They use a tone like a teacher might use with a pupil handing in late homework. You say it like you mean it, because they have the power to make you wait for an endlessly long time, and in one case I actually overheard (albeit he was a rather objectionable young American captain who deserved all he got frankly) being denied entry. 

“Your ships registration document please ‘captain’” “Here you go Ma’am”; They take the document and make a copy. “Have you filled out the Sailclear form?”, “Yes Ma’am”, “The EAPIS form” (designed for airlines and cruise ships), “My pilot guide did not say that was necessary for yachts”. “Well, it has been for a month now; go wait in line for a PC and fill the form in and come back to me”. I do this, and return to the window with a smile (I’m playing their game nicely here).

Since Covid, there are big glass or Perspex screens erected between captains, and the customs and immigration officers. It’s almost impossible to hear what each says through this ‘wall’. To improve this, a two-way grill is often fitted. This assuredly means that you both speak loudly and listen with your ear pressed against the grill to understand what’s being said. A direct path of virus transmission is easily established.

The person from Customs completes five separate forms with the same information, gathered from my various online (or paper-based) submissions. They give me all five forms and I sign as captain at the bottom of each to take to ‘Immigration’, with luck in the same building. 

I wait in line for Immigration. In some Islands, only the captain is required to present themselves with all the crew passports. In others, the officer wants to see the whole crew (there’s little way of knowing which way applies ahead of time). So, assume it’s just me; I provide passports, Ships Registration (again) which the officer takes yet another copy of. They scan our passports and want to know how many guns and how much ammo I have onboard (yes, seriously, people do carry guns on yachts sometimes). Otherwise, it's how many litres of rum etc., the usual. They keep one of the forms and give me the others back, all stamped with an official immigration stamp and signature and send me right back to the Customs officer where I started. 

“Hello Ma’am, me again”. They take the forms back, keep the other copies (for I don’t know what; I’ll ask next time), and give me one copy to keep. It’s important that I do, both for exiting the Island, and for qualifying for duty free products and services in chandleries where the form gets me up to 20% island sales tax off. 

I’m nearly done. Next, I need some money to give to Port Control or the Harbourmaster. There are taxes for anchoring, taxes for the environment, taxes to pass under bridges (yes, seriously), and just about anything else you can think of. This can mount up to, in some cases, a couple of hundred dollars. In the last port we went to though, the Harbour master was off the Island, his deputy had sadly passed away, and the lady covering for them both had a sick daughter and was AWOL. The keys to the office were nowhere to be found so nothing to pay! The lady from immigration was a bit flummoxed, but rather than hold us (and another dozen yachts clearing out) hostage, gave us all our exit stamps.

One last thing; published office opening and closing times are for guidance only, you’d also be well advised not to rely on all the various administrations being open or closed at the same time! In the last place I cleared in, the lady behind the glass pulled the closed sign out as I approached, one hour before the published time!  

That was just clearing into an Island. I do pretty much the same on the way out (including paying again, but usually less so), and really importantly, collect the exit emigration form to hand to the next Island’s Customs officer and start the whole process over again. No form, no entry at the next Island. 

All safely cleared in though, me and Cassini’s crew can move on to the fun part and get a rum punch or two. Actually, as captain, I might have some catching up to do as they have smuggled themselves ashore illicitly already!

Simon

Cassini’s skipper