Cruise to France - Q flag / customs?

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Polly's Kettle

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I've searched high & low and can't find the answers to this.

If I cruise to France (which is in the Schengen area and we are out), do I have to fly a Q flag/ report to the harbour master with passports on arrival?

I felt sure that this would have been done to death, but I can't find a related thread, nor anything specific on the RYA site. Instinct says the answer is yes, but none of the race boats, friends cruisers that I have been on have ever done this.

Thanks
 
Polly's Kettle said:
do I have to fly a Q flag
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Not yet.

We usually, arrive drop the anchor and go ashore for a proper cup of coffee.

Just make sure you have all the proper documentation and in date flares for when the wo/men in black inform you they are coming aboard.
 
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Thanks Quiddle.

Given that that is the very marina I am going to, was the customs office at the marina? I will be tight for time to catch a flight, so I'm trying to plan ahead.
 
Have to 'fess up I didn't bother with Customs, I'd crossed via Ushant which was going to be my excuse whilst brandishing my 'Boarded by Douane' receipt from 3 months ago. It's the first time I've seen a sign like this in my normal 'first port of call' marinas: L'Aber Wrach, Roscoff, Perros Guirec, Brest and Camaret.

Customs Office is about 400m NE along quay from Marina Office.
 
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billcole said:
Do you have to have in date flares, or is it just that you have to not have out of date flares?
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The latter I believe. Which gives you a hard choice if you've got a liferaft in need of a service which probably contains out of date ones. An out of service date liferaft is probably better than no liferaft but you risk a fine by having it on board.
 
billcole said:
Do you have to have in date flares, or is it just that you have to not have out of date flares?
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If you carry flares they need to be in date.

I have a rolling replacement programme and always need to remember to just carry the "in-date" ones. There is a lot of arguments about the use of flares or not. Personally, I carry them.
 
laika said:
Nobody will be interested in your schengen forms.
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That may well be the case in France, just a word of warning about Belgium: I talked to the Belgian Scheepvaartpolitie, the marine police unit, and they now insist on Schengen forms to be submitted. They will also come to the boat to see for themselves. Stricter rules came into force on April 7th, in response to a number of cases of human trafficking and the high state of terror alert. The officer told me that Belgian boats had to go through the procedure before leaving for the UK and upon arrival back. I would be surprised if they did not do the same with British yachts, although I did not specifically ask.
 
westhinder said:
That may well be the case in France, just a word of warning about Belgium: I talked to the Belgian Scheepvaartpolitie, the marine police unit, and they now insist on Schengen forms to be submitted. They will also come to the boat to see for themselves. Stricter rules came into force on April 7th, in response to a number of cases of human trafficking and the high state of terror alert. The officer told me that Belgian boats had to go through the procedure before leaving for the UK and upon arrival back. I would be surprised if they did not do the same with British yachts, although I did not specifically ask.
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Although I had printed a sample form from the RYA, I was presented with a form on arrival in Blankenbeg three days ago by the Harbourmistress. Her colleague knocked us up next morning to make sure that our form was ready for collection since he had to take them to the authorities soon, so it is clearly under tighter control. Later, a couple of police looked at our boat while we were not aboard, but we saw no more of them.
 
Polly's Kettle said:
I've searched high & low and can't find the answers to this.

If I cruise to France (which is in the Schengen area and we are out), do I have to fly a Q flag/ report to the harbour master with passports on arrival?

I felt sure that this would have been done to death, but I can't find a related thread, nor anything specific on the RYA site. Instinct says the answer is yes, but none of the race boats, friends cruisers that I have been on have ever done this.

Thanks
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I have spoken about this to French customs reps on their stand at the Salon Nautique. The last one was quite categorical, " The only thing that interests us in the justification for the flag. ie the ship's papers.

OTOH they have the right to ask for more.

If they do a search you can object to them going into the cabins because of privacy laws. They need a court order for that.
 
If they do a search you can object to them going into the cabins because of privacy laws. They need a court order for that.[/QUOTE]

I don't think they do need a court warrant... And personnally I wouldn't try that trick with them, either in France or in the UK! They will take days to go through every single screw and put your boat under their custody. In France custom officers have more legal power than the police!
 
Polly's Kettle said:
I've searched high & low and can't find the answers to this.

If I cruise to France (which is in the Schengen area and we are out), do I have to fly a Q flag/ report to the harbour master with passports on arrival?

In the last 15 years of travelling to France I have never been asked for papers, passports or been visited. The french tend to be very pragmatic about rules - ie they want the business.

A few years back when the first dramas were occuring with Belgium over red diesel the Scuttlebutt rally organisers contacted the then manager of Chantereyne marina at Cherbourg (Magli ?spelling) she went to the police and customs to ensure that there would be no problems for us.

I have however seen a quite a few Dutch boats boarded and searched probably because of their loose rules about drugs but maybe there are other reasons.

I felt sure that this would have been done to death, but I can't find a related thread, nor anything specific on the RYA site. Instinct says the answer is yes, but none of the race boats, friends cruisers that I have been on have ever done this.

Thanks
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In the UK, it has always been so. They needed to have a look before the evidence evaporated. Getting a court order gave the perps pleanty of time to clean up the scene.
 
DownWest said:
In the UK, it has always been so. They needed to have a look before the evidence evaporated. Getting a court order gave the perps pleanty of time to clean up the scene.
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I was the HR Manager at a large factory in West London in the mid-80s and I was working late one evening when I received a call from the Duty Manager say that there were two men in his office who wanted to speak to us. I went downstairs to his office and the two men introduced themselves as Customs and Excise and handed me their ID cards. They said that they needed to establish a look-out post in the roof space above one of the production halls.

I asked what it was about and they replied that they could not say.

I asked whether we had any choice in the matter and they replied no.

I asked whether I could mention their stakeout to the rest of the management team and they said that other than our security team no, and that if I did I could be arrested and charged.

I asked how long they would be there and they replied that they could not say but it could be days.

I asked whether they needed food, drink or toilet facilities (this was a food factory!) and they said that they were totally self-suficient and needed nothing.

I asked when they intended to start their stake out and they said now.

And that was it. I spoke to the Security Manager the next day and asked him to brief his team to allow entry to anyone with an offical pass. To this day I have no idea how long they stayed in the roof but I believe it was a couple of days.

Richard
 
Excise have always had considerable powers. There was a time when GP's surgeries had the opportunity of installing a coffee machine in the waiting room and making a profit from the patients. Part of this involved registering for VAT and using this to make other claims. It also involved making one liable to inspection by the Excise and their draconian powers, which killed the scheme.
 
Sandy said:
Not yet.

We usually, arrive drop the anchor and go ashore for a proper cup of coffee.

Just make sure you have all the proper documentation and in date flares for when the wo/men in black inform you they are coming aboard.
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Spent a week in a Camaret storm bound. The only French we saw were in the bar until we sought out someone to pay before we left... Although pleased to take out money, they weren't otherwise interested in us. It was early season though.
 
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