Long term live-aboard cruising on European waterways cannot be over for us Brits

sailaboutvic said:
For the record .
People have ask how they can extend there 90/180 so they can carry on sailing in the EU for at less most of the summer .
I have given then a way around it , just the same way many non Eu sailor have been doing for as many years I been out here,
I all way said that it mean bending the rules , I have never hinded that , I wouldn't hide that as I do want people to know the risk they taken if they do as I suggested ,
I am in no way forcing anyone to do as suggested ,
everyone has there own view how far they are happy to go with risk taken.
It's been very clear for a long time now once we leave the EU things won't be the same , option was very clear
Residency, ( which still won't give you free movement in the whole of the EU ) become an EU citizen ( which will give you free monument within the EU ) marry an EU citizen ( even I won't go that far to stay in the EU :) ), find a way around it , or spend 90 days and get out of the EU .
End off ...
So people need to except what's happen , stop moaning about it and make a choice and get on with their life .

Last of all , I'm available for best man service if anyone thinking of taken the option of marring a Eu Women or man .
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Yup - definitely trying to get on with the rest of my life. So glad I did manage to cruise freely for 10 years somewhere where it was hot! Let us know how your cruising goes on this year.
 
Caladh said:
Yup - definitely trying to get on with the rest of my life. So glad I did manage to cruise freely for 10 years somewhere where it was hot! Let us know how your cruising goes on this year.
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For the first year ever we don't have a plain as yet but most likely we will do what we done the last two years Malta , Sardinia Italy west coast then the south of France , but instead of returning to sicily we probably head out of the med and end up in Portugal or head south to the canaries and have a winter there , although we done a lot of north Africa we wouldn't mind seeing some of Morocco on the west coast,
Which would leave the gate open to cruise Madeira nd the azores he following spring.
Any one going our way your welcome to look as up .
 
Thanks to many of you for your positive contributions to this thread.

My purpose was to find practical solutions around the limitations to movement that came into effect for British citizens after 1st January 2021. I didn’t want to trigger xenophobic responses but it seems I managed to do that.

In brief, what came out of the replies is: this is the age of Schengen and as citizens of a third country we have lost freedoms we had before 1st January; wandering sailors cannot avoid Schengen rules (just think about data collection and data bases for a moment) and if we don’t follow them we will be shown the door; a Schengen visa would solve the problem and may not be expensive relative to a year’s cruising but the medical cover to go with it on top of Ehic or Ghic (as St599 and Forty-Two say) is eye-wateringly prohibitive; many nations of Europe offer us residency as a way round 90/180, not because they are money-grabbing willy-wavers any more than we are but because they want to protect the rights of their own citizens in the UK, and this may work for some of us but sadly comes with conditions that don’t work for me, (or Caladh: Brexit has restricted my freedom of movement but I do not wish to take up residency in another country) and UK nationals may find that the requirement to be more than six months in that country may put their rights in the UK at risk; so an offer of 180/360 might do the trick if individual nations will make it but that in part depends on reciprocity, which in turn depends on trust. Boris hasn’t scored highly on trustworthiness so far. As things fall apart we seem to be seeing a passive-aggressive government becoming more openly hostile towards the EU.

Things are very confused over Brexit and people are right to say let the dust settle, but it could take a very long time before that means any changes for us boat-travellers. As syvictoria says, this is tiny in the grand scheme of pressing issues that the UK government faces. The government has to sort out the economic problems of producers, farmers and fishermen who can't get their tariff-free goods sold in Europe, of hauliers who meet severe friction trying to get across frictionless borders, and the financial sector (80% of the economy) who were barely covered in the Trade and Cooperation Agreement and have even more serious passporting problems than we do. It won't be easy for the government. It took four years to produce a Withdrawal Agreement that is failing 20% of the UK economy and doesn’t cover the remaining 80% and invented a non-border “sea border” for NI to avoid jeopardising the Good Friday Peace Agreement which, if it brings back insecurity in Ireland, will probably move NI into the Republic and be the end of the UK. So with a big Brexit dog’s dinner on its plate, how many years will it take the government to produce Withdrawal Agreement Mark II or accept what is staring them in the face: the de facto need for another transition period to get a softer deal done? It is likely that the freedoms of individual UK citizens will continue to be a low priority for this government, although there may be economic pressure to change that from musicians and performers, whose current problems ultimately relate to lost freedom of movement. If the government is pressured into agreeing a mobility chapter with the EU, as it had been expected to negotiate, we boat-travellers might benefit too.

Not all is lost. There have been several leads for me to follow.

Several of you have said that a longer stay than 90/180 might be all we need. Well, there is a Schengen precedent for that. In 2014 the EU acknowledged that expansion from the five founding members to 26 states created such a large area that it posed barrier to tourists, live performance artists, researchers, students, pensioners, and service providers. They discussed introducing a touring visa for third-country nationals that would allow a stay from 90 days to a year (with the possibility of extension up to 2 years) if the visitor did not stay more than 90 days in any 180-day period in the same Member State. As Baggywrinkle says this was killed on 03/07/2018. If the touring visa made sense in 2014 it makes even more sense now when 60 million new third country citizens have just parked up 20 miles off the shores of Schengen. Will the EU come to this conclusion unilaterally or will it help if our government encourages them?

Also, perhaps the sovereign nations of Europe will want to help us Brits. It may seem ironic to hope a foreign sovereign nation will help get back freedoms taken away by our own government, but Portugal and Spain immediately stepped up with offers of residence. Sadly for me Iberia doesn’t connect to the European waterways. People here have said that France and The Netherlands are offering solutions but I haven’t been able to check. Their official websites deal with workers, investors and entrepreneurs rather than Brits wanting to cruise on their boats. The UK website also says nothing. I have put specific questions to the British embassies for France and the Netherlands but get pointed to standard online links. I have emailed questions to French and Dutch embassies. I wait to hear.

What next? It is clear from your responses that many of you, like me, feel that Brexit – and specifically this hard, incomplete and damaging version of Brexit - has deprived us of an important freedom of movement. Brexit may have caused bigger problems for others but individual freedom is never a trivial thing to lose. And it is clear that we are not the only Brits whose lives are reduced by this. So as well as asking for help from other organisations you belong to, please join the wider movement and sign this petition and send it around to others:
Petition: Negotiate more favorable post-transition travel rules for U.K. citizens

Meanwhile, if anyone has inside knowledge on longer visa-free stays or on available long-stay visas and their costs/conditions, or on how to resuscitate the touring visa, from nation states or the mighty Schengen itself, can they post it on this thread.
 
Todays paper - over 5m EU citizens have applied for settlement in the UK. Around half already granted - many of the others may not yet be eligible, but intend to settle when they qualify. Most of these will be of working age. On the other hand the estimate of UK citizens in the whole of the EU is between 700000 and 1m, majority retired. Illustrates perfectly the imbalanced impact of freedom of movement. While the settlement has done a reasonable job of protecting retirees, helped by the willingness of some states to grant residency, in my view the negotiators failed to use this huge imbalance to get a better deal for travellers as being discussed here. However I can understand their reticence because of the huge positive impact most of the 5m have on our economy.
 
saab96 said:
In brief, what came out of the replies is: this is the age of Schengen and as citizens of a third country we have lost freedoms we had before 1st January; wandering sailors cannot avoid Schengen rules (just think about data collection and data bases for a moment) and if we don’t follow them we will be shown the door; a Schengen visa would solve the problem and may not be expensive relative to a year’s cruising but the medical cover to go with it on top of Ehic or Ghic (as St599 and Forty-Two say) is eye-wateringly prohibitive;
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Just to clarify, the statements are about a National Visa - there is no Schengen Visa for more than 90 in 180 and UK citizens have a waiver.
 
Signed, but I think that it's not a case of negotiating a better offer. According to the RYA Cruising Manager at last year's Cruising Conference, a better visa-free deal was on the table for all British Citizens if the UK reciprocated for all EU Citizens but the UK refused as they wanted freedom to implement more border controls.

So any offer will need reciprocation.
 
st599 said:
Signed, but I think that it's not a case of negotiating a better offer. According to the RYA Cruising Manager at last year's Cruising Conference, a better visa-free deal was on the table for all British Citizens if the UK reciprocated for all EU Citizens but the UK refused as they wanted freedom to implement more border controls.

So any offer will need reciprocation.
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Yes, I too had heard this. Clearly negotiating on anything to do with FoM didn't really fit with the 'get Brexit done' 'taking back control' mantra at the time, but hopefully now in the cold light of day, and with the benefit of hindsight and pressure from other sectors, the government might be more inclined to reconsider and renegotiate...?
 
st599 said:
Signed, but I think that it's not a case of negotiating a better offer. According to the RYA Cruising Manager at last year's Cruising Conference, a better visa-free deal was on the table for all British Citizens if the UK reciprocated for all EU Citizens but the UK refused as they wanted freedom to implement more border controls.

So any offer will need reciprocation.
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My understanding: UK allows 180 days to any tourist visitor, with a requirement to leave after 180, but visitor can then immediately re-enter and get another 180 days, ad infinitum. HMG refused to seek to negotiate same for BritCits visiting EU27.
 
Twister_Ken said:
My understanding: UK allows 180 days to any tourist visitor, with a requirement to leave after 180, but visitor can then immediately re-enter and get another 180 days, ad infinitum. HMG refused to seek to negotiate same for BritCits visiting EU27.
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Really!? That's staggering! I had assumed that it was 180/360!

AFAIA, the government refused a reciprocal 180/360 with the EU because the EU wanted it to be a visa-waived agreement. The UK government wanted to be able to 'choose' who could come in, but were happy to grant 180... or maybe it seems, 360! It was all about being seen to be in control of our borders. Nothing else - just mantra.
 
syvictoria said:
Really!? That's staggering! I had assumed that it was 180/360!

AFAIA, the government refused a reciprocal 180/360 with the EU because the EU wanted it to be a visa-waived agreement. The UK government wanted to be able to 'choose' who could come in, but were happy to grant 180... or maybe it seems, 360! It was all about being seen to be in control of our borders. Nothing else - just mantra.
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The problem with the more open ended entry regime is the impossibility of policing it, and as we have seen once a person is in this country it is almost impossible to remove them - whatever their status. Estimate is approx 1.5 million people already in this country "illegally". There are not even plans to have a controlled entry system like Schengen. The concern is not about law abiding citizens like "us" and EU citizens but about the several million migrants in the EU, many illegally, many of whom would prefer to come to the UK (as the Dover Straits boat people show) and the porous southern border of the EU.
 
sailaboutvic said:
For the first year ever we don't have a plain as yet but most likely we will do what we done the last two years Malta , Sardinia Italy west coast then the south of France , but instead of returning to sicily we probably head out of the med and end up in Portugal or head south to the canaries and have a winter there , although we done a lot of north Africa we wouldn't mind seeing some of Morocco on the west coast,
Which would leave the gate open to cruise Madeira nd the azores he following spring.
Any one going our way your welcome to look as up .
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I think you would enjoy Rabat as much as we did if you head down towards the Canaries, and would be fun to finally meet up. That’s if we don’t finally head off to the Caribbean but we might put that back another year.
 
RupertW said:
I think you would enjoy Rabat as much as we did if you head down towards the Canaries, and would be fun to finally meet up. That’s if we don’t finally head off to the Caribbean but we might put that back another year.
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There a 50/50 chance we head south , we have no intention crossing the pond elder mothers , grandchildren and other commitments in case we may have to travel back in emergency would make it expensive plus cruising in Europe for so many years I have a good idea how things work here.
What we can and can't get away with .
But if we do come south it be good to contact you with info for places like Rabat and any other interesting harbours along that coast no matter how isolated they may be , we like isolated places that not many cruisers visit.
 
st599 said:
Just to clarify, the statements are about a National Visa - there is no Schengen Visa for more than 90 in 180 and UK citizens have a waiver.
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Agreed. The Schengen visa is for 90/180 and we and selected other third countries are exempt so when we visit Schengen we don’t need a visa. My point though was that Schengen came close to a new touring visa allowing a stay from 90 days to a year (extendable to 2 years) and if they did that in 2014 they might be inclined to have another go now that 60 million of us Brits on their doorstep are third country citizens. If they know we would appreciate it.
 
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