Yachts trying to return to the UK

geem

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You would not believe how hard it is to sail home! We arrived In Cork today from the Azores. Due to the stupidity of the UK law on bringing dogs in to the country, we have to sail to Ireland first before we can sail to the UK. Once the dogs are cleared in to Ireland we can sail on.
We are now sat on a visitors pontoon at the RCYC. We arent allowed off the boat. We have to do a 14 day quarantine even though we have been at sea for 9 days, we had a negative CO19 test in Azores and the Azores has no CO19 cases.
So we leave tomorrow morning for Northern England. The weather looks ropey on Friday so plan to tuck in to Holyhead, but are we allowed? Wales still closed to boating?
We did plan to go to Fleetwood marina for a couple of weeks but they are refusing us entry because we are a boat returning from abroad!! They also say that we cant stay on the boat over night! We would just need one night so we can hire a van to empty the boat and drive home, but no the rules say no overnight on a boat! Its our home at the moment and will stay our home until we move off it back on to land.
So the plan is to sail to Glasson Dock. We only get one weather window due to our draft. 5th July. Next window is 21st July. Lets hope they let us in!
 

geem

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Yes, the rabies rules mean we normally fly home from Curacao in the ABC islands to Amsterdam. From there we take a train to Hook of Holland then the ferry to Harwich. Its the only ferry you can brings dogs in to the UK as foot passengers. Cost per dog is €20 on the ferry. Flying the dogs on klm to Amsterdam is €200. Flying in to the UK from the Caribbean was quoted at £4k for both dogs. This is all well and good in normal times but when you are in the middle of a pandemic, normal routes of travel are not open to us. Contact with Foreign Office and Pet Helpline was hopeless. We were told you can only bring dogs in on a designated route. Those routes didnt/dont exist due to the pandemic. What should have happened in my opinion, was that we should have been able to nominate a uk port to arrive at and had Border Control and a vet meet us. We would pick up cost for vet and everybody would be happy. When you are dealing with numpties in the controlling authorities it was never going to happen.
Instead we sailed to Southern Ireland and cleared dogs in there. You can sail with dogs between UK and Ireland so we got around the rules that way.
 
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