Black Sea sailing

[All_at_Sea]

Hello - we intend to sail the Black Sea has anyone any experience of the things we are likely to expect? I also wonder about sailing up the river to Kiev - is this navigable does anyone know. Has anyone wintered in Odessa or similar?

Eagerly awaiting your replies.

Steve

 

[Guest]

[ QUOTE ]
Hello - we intend to sail the Black Sea has anyone any experience of the things we are likely to expect? I also wonder about sailing up the river to Kiev - is this navigable does anyone know. Has anyone wintered in Odessa or similar?

Eagerly awaiting your replies.

Steve

[/ QUOTE ]
Hi Steve, I can't answer your question from direct experience, but I think that you'll find that the Dnepr should be navigable up to Kiev from the Black Sea. Not sure about getting there from the North. As it happens, I just came back from Kiev this afternoon - the Dnepr is a pretty big river even as far up as Kiev, has a solid-looking (but rusty and discolouured!) red-green buoyage system, some smaller sailing boats messing about on it, and at least one sailing yacht that looked like it came from the sea. Though I don't know what it's draught was.

Don't know about Odessa as a place to leave a yacht, but one place to look at is Sevastopol in the Crimea. They have a sailing club. Even better may be Balaclava -apart from being an extremely interesting place, there is an active sailing club there and some decent yachts - not many, but they probably can suggest where to lay up.

Nikolaev also has a sailing club - I haven't visited it for years, so don't know how developed it is.

One thing to check out is customs duty. If it's anything like Russia, then you have to pay full duty on any item that you import for more than 6 months...

Hope that helps

Simon

 

[All_at_Sea]

Thanks for that. Do you know if this a concern just for a sailing boat for a few months? If we are moving around do we need some sort of visa to sail these waters or is it very country specific - l'll have to ring the embassies.

 

[Guest]

[ QUOTE ]
Thanks for that. Do you know if this a concern just for a sailing boat for a few months? If we are moving around do we need some sort of visa to sail these waters or is it very country specific - l'll have to ring the embassies.

[/ QUOTE ]
There are two different issues - visas for you personally, and customs duties payable on the boat.

So far as visas are concerned, unlike Russia, British citizens don't need visas to visit Ukraine. There is however a limit on the length of time you can spend there at one go without a visa (can't remember how long, I think it may be one month, but it'll be on the Ukrainian embassy website), but so long as you come and go from time to time, you'll be OK. If you wnt to spend longer periods there, it probably isn't too much of a problem either, but you would need to apply for some sort of registration of where you live etc. Best thing is to ask the embassy if you want to spend long periods there. Obviously that's a question of how long YOU spend there - not your boat.

So far as the boat is concerned - I don't know the answer, but it's possible that Ukraine is similar to Russia. That has a system of "temporary import" that allows you to bring your boat into the country provided you leave within 6 months. If you go a day over that, then full import duty becomes payable. There may be ways of extending the period, but I suspect they'll be aimed at expatriates living there.

All the above is not definitive info, just a general guide to how it works to help you start asking the right questions. There's some info on Noonsite