Customs
Stream
Darrell Jackson and Sarah Barnes
Sun 5 Jan 2014 17:41
Compare and Contrast custom formalities in two adjacent Dutch Caribbean Islands.
When we arrived in Statia and I visited the Harbour Office as requested in the sailing directions, I gave the young lady the name of the boat, how many people were on board and how long we were staying. She said that was all she needed (apart from the $30 harbour dues!) and that I should take the piece of paper she gave me to customs before we "cleared out". There was no customs officer on duty at the time as he was over at the airport as a plane was due to land soon. Two days later when we were leaving I went to the customs at 09.30 and was met by a queue of people waiting to clear out. The customs officer was at the airport waiting for the first plane of the day. An hour or so later after a coffee and a wifi session at the Old Gin House Hotel I returned and joined the queue. I was soon given a couple of forms to complete, one for customs and one for immigration, with the usual info required of boat details and crew particulars (we have crew not passengers as you have to pay more for passengers!) departure date and destination. The customs form was for entry and departure. Passports duly stamped I was given our clearance form and we were on our way.
Arriving in Saba some 4 hours later we first had the long dinghy ride to Fort Bay where we clear customs. This was very wet due to the large waves and strong wind, but the harbour was sheltered. The Harbour office is clearly marked so we went there first, queued for a few minutes before being asked if we had cleared customs yet. "No" was the answer so it was back down the stairs to the customs office. This is manned 24/7 according to the officer and I was soon filling in the same two forms I had recently completed in Statia (Saba is also part of Holland). One of these forms was for Immigration, the other for Customs, but they contain virtually the same information. Once these were completed we requested stamps for our passports which the customs officer did after he had got the stamp out of his vehicle (he had just come from the airport!). We were now free to return to the Harbour Office where I was asked to complete the identical form that I had just completed for Customs. When I pointed this out I was told that the Harbour authority required their own copy except that this one cost us another $30 for the privilege. Our last port of call was to the Saba Marine Park office to pay our dues there. $1/person/night and $3/boat/night. Not a huge amount and it does go towards all the work they do in maintaining the mooring buoys for visiting yachts and all the dive boats.
There is a move amongst some of the Caribbean Islands to speed up Customs and Immigration by using an online form to enter all details so that when you are in these offices all the info is there already and the procedure should be much quicker. Not rocket science I know, but it will be interesting to see how long it takes all islands to adopt this system currently being used by Antigua and Barbuda amongst others.
After our passports had been stamped in Saba the customs officer asked if we would be needing a taxi for a tour of the island. It just so happened that we did and the following day was his day off and he just happened to have a taxi! All taxis are government controlled so our tour price was a fixed one and so, after another rolley night on a mooring in Wells Bay, we duly turned up to meet Emael (or was that Email?) our Customs official and taxi driver after the now traditional wet dinghy ride into Fort Bay.
More soon, but giving a little away, we were the highest people in the kingdom of the Netherlands at one point!