Fort Lauderdale to Brisbane

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CraigBradley

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Hi all, we have the opportunity to live / work in Brisbane and would like to bring our 38 cat with us from Ft. Lauderdale. It appears the swiftest way of doing this would be on the back of a ship - the soft option. What about sailing it there? Anyone with some good do's and don't in planning this trip, time of year, Panama issues etc. I guess it could go overland to US west coast avoiding the canal transit etc. Would really appreciate hearing from folks out there with ideas / experiences.
Bring on the sunshine !!
Thanks
 
I did a trip on a 60 footer as crew from Fort Lauderdale to Adelaide. We left in September and stopped off at both ends of the Panama canal, The Marquises, Tahiti, Fiji and Sydney. The key to the Panama canal is to get an agent otherwise you could be there a long time. Details of agents are available from the yacht club at the Atlantic side of the canal. The canal is very beautiful but best travel by taxi around Panama. Facilities are limited in the Marquises so make sue you have plenty of spares to get to Tahiti without breaking too much. It was mostly nice tradewind sailing but we did have a couple of force 11 gales near the end of the trip. Take some good fishing gear(a reel mounted on the rear rail and a good supply of plastic squid etc) and enjoy the fishing. We arrived in Australia around Christmas.
 
Recommend you take a good look at the costs of bringing the boat into Australia as

Your yacht will probably attract duty of 5% and GST of 10%.

You can set the cost of getting the boat to Aus against the valuation.
 
I have not double checked (and, of course you should if the 5% is important to one) but I believe that you are right about no duty, but for USA originating boat imports (so original poster probably ok) - by pleasure of the recent USA/Australia free trade agreement.

Is same for us here in NZ with similar free trade agreement, no duty to be paid to import boat into Oz, just the GST.

Not so sure that it applies to non USA or NZ boats though. Maybe someone can clarify?

John
 
Hi John

The guy who gave me the info about zero duty was an importer from France and Sweden so it is not just the free trade treaty with USA. The Aust policy of reducing tarrifs has been active for some years now and there are many goods which are zero rated now. In any case, you are right to emphasise that formal advice ahould be taken.

Ray
 
Hi Ray

Your comments raised my curiosity (and curiosity kills cats /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif). I have had a look at the current Australian Customs Tariff and both pleasure power and sailboats under 150 tonnes are still shown as having 5% duty imposed (there is no duty on those over 150 tonnes though) - is in Section 17, Chap 89/4, reference 8904. I could not see any concession applying to what we would call normal pleasure vessels (ie excluding PWC's, RIB's, etc for which some concessions seem to exist) but it maybe that the guy who gave you the advice was refering to some very specific boat types for which a concession exists. Of course, the on-line copy of the tariff may not have been updated if the change to free of duty is very recent.

It may also be that pleasure boats originating in certain of the countries having preferential trade arrangements with Australia are duty free (such as boats originating in NZ certainly are). The current countries with preferential agreements (as far as I know) are New Zealand, Pacific Forum Islands and Fiji, Singapore, Canada, developing countries, United States and Thailand.

So I wonder if the guy who gave you the advice was right or wrong?

As we are agreed it is always best to get advice from the customs peeps themselves - don't know if is the same right this moment, but in Australia that advice had usually to come from the customs office in the planned port of actual entry. I wonder if anyone has done it (asked or imported) recently?

John
 
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