Is a license necessary

[Deleted User YDKXO]

I think all your experience shows is that even when a state has an "official" policy, it is not always enforced by local officials or they might not even be aware of it if the "rules" have changed.

Yes I think thats possible. I bought the permit in Novigrad one day just before lunchtime. We got the strong sense that he just wanted us out of his office asap. The crew list document isn't enforced either. As you may know, every time you have a new guest on your boat, you are supposed to troop off to the harbourmaster's office with that person's passport and have the crew list updated. Often the harbourmaster's office is a long way from the marina and to be honest, the last two times we've had guests on board I haven't bothered with updating the crewlist. Every time you moor in a marina you have to give the crewlist and the permit to the marina staff but its just a box ticking exercise. So far, nobody has ever checked that the crewlist contains the names of the people actually on board. Anyway, any time we've had trouble with officialdom in our lives, I've just pointed the SWMBO at them. She does a wonderful line in abject sobbing

 

[Deleted User YDKXO]

Deleted User, Couldn't agree more. I am sat here in Mahon it's the 9th september and there is about a couple of dozen visiting boats. The Spanish have scared everybody away, mainly due to matriculation tax etc. Some will know that I had a charter boat here in Menorca and that was hit by the customs and bonded. At that time there were maybe a dozen legal charter boats working out of Mahon, In my case they released my boat 24hours later only saying that the details had gone to Palma for investigation but I'm afraid waiting for ever to see if you were going to get a 12% TAX and a further 50% fine was not for me. My boat went to Barcelona and straight onto the open market. It's sold and now lives in Turkey.

Personaly I didnt think that they could have imposed the Matriculation as I'm not a resident. but I wasn't going to keep the boat here to find out. Here again it struck me at the time that the whole Matriculation thing was very much the Balearic Goverment rather than the mainland, I took this asumption as everything I was hearing about people being done was within the three islands, I could be wrong but it seemed that way. In Barcelona I had no problems although the boats docs had commercial all over them.

So now in Mahon Empty reastaurants along the port, empty chandlers etc etc

and talking to other visiting skippers not much difference elsware in the Balearics. Maybe the Spanish should take a leaf from the French.

OD, you were very lucky. Unfortunately, I wasn't so lucky and my boat in Palma had a 'precinto' slapped on it which meant I couldn't use it until I'd paid the matriculation tax (+ interest), which I eventually did. However, when I heard rumours about fines on top (upto 75% of the tax was mooted in my case which would be halved if I paid up quickly), I'd had enough and arranged for my boat to be delivered to Sardinia very quickly. Yes, the local economy has lost millions of Euros because of this matriculation tax. I'd bet that the loss of TVA and other taxes on that revenue in any one year is far greater than the matriculation tax collected and of course, that loss now goes on year after year. Certainly, the matriculation tax issue was applied more rigorously in the Balearics than other parts of Spain although I understand the authorities on the Costa Blanca and the Costa del Sol also tried to apply it. I guess the Balearic authorities saw all those thousands of expensive boats and just couldn't resist having a go at them, but without thinking through the consequences.