Weymouth
Sailing
Club

Well done to all the boats making it over the Cherbourg a fortnight ago and apologies we didn’t have our traditional get-together in the evening… though I think most crews ended up in Eldorado as normal! It was a great run and lovely to see so many local boats in Port Chantereyne.

As you may have heard, we had a fair bit of excitement with French customs as we made our way into Cherbourg on Saturday afternoon. For the record, it happened something like this..

About 2 hours out of Cherbourg we got buzzed by a helicopter. Looked like they were having a quick look at all the yachts making their way into port. However they came back to us and flew very low and close (200’) behind us to have a really good look at the boat.. and the crew!

About 30 minutes later a large patrol boat came out and held station behind us. This was a bit scary - we were hammering along under spinnaker at around 9 knots and they were only about 60’ aft of us. Eventually they held up a sign ‘VHF 8’ and the fun really began…

They hailed us and I had to quickly explain that my French was pretty bad, was there any chance we could speak English? After a long pause another agent got on the radio and explained, in perfect English, that they had a few questions to ask us. These questions were actually pretty extensive: home port, destination, purpose of visit, length of stay, people on board, our SSR number, insurance details etc.

Having given all this information, we were then treated to another long silence.

They came back on the VHF and explained they’d have to board us, examine the documents in person, search the boat and check our passports. We were still under kite at this point and so we asked if they’d like us to drop sail to make the boarding easier. They said they preferred us to keep our speed on and not to do anything sudden!

About 20 minutes later, the patrol boat had dropped a rib in the water and we were joined by two customs officials. Always nice to see people step aboard wearing the right kit, like flack jackets and sidearms!

After we’d welcomed them aboard and offered them a cup of tea (seriously..), they asked to see all the ship’s paperwork. We’d purchased the boat from a broker in France towards the end of May and fortunately I’d kept all the extensive paperwork on onboard. It turned out that whilst the UK Ships Registry were happy to register the new boat with a bill of sale sent via email, the French agencies weren’t able to release the vessel from their registry until they’d received a paper copy of the document in the post. Turned out the broker hadn’t completed this step, so as far as our friends in customs were concerned, the boat was still French and had been illegally registered in the UK.

However, they accepted our explanation and actually seemed a little embarrassed that the delay was due to bureaucracy on their side of La Manche. I asked if the French agency would ever be likely to accept emails, to which the customs officer just laughed… ‘errr, non.’

From the moment they stepped aboard, it was all extremely cordial. We were given another paper form (filled out in triplicate by each of the two officers) as a lovely memento of their visit. It’ll be kept aboard, along with the library of other documents for next time…