Mail forwarding.

[DeeGee]

How do people deal with their snailmail ? I have tried to turn off as much as poss. but there still remain the odd bills and unexpected but important letters.

Does Post Restante work? If yes, how? Do you have it forwarded to a marina, and is that reliably safe?

??

<hr width=100% size=1>Black Sugar - the sweetest of all

 

[AndrewB]

I've used Poste Restaunte, which generally works OK. You need to know something is coming as many offices operate quite a short time limit on held post. There is generally a modest charge. Beware unfamiliarity with address conventions, a packet addressed to "Mr DeeGee, Yacht Black Sugar", could get sorted to any of the M, D, Y, B or S bins!

The major blue-water clubs and marinas like RCN Coruna provide a post service, but letters and packets tend to be left exposed. I would not go that way in advance though making arrangements with a marina once arrived is generally convenient.

Incidentally, my preferred solution was to have mail faxed by a reliable friend in England (giving them the fax machine is a fair exchange). There are small offices able to accept fax everywhere. I just found one, fired off a fax giving their phone number, and collected my post the next day!

 

[jeanne]

We used a postal address in UK (helpul friend) who sorted out dross and kept the rest. When we arrived somewhere that we expected to stay for a week or two, we phoned with PO address and he put everything in one envelope and sent to poste restante at local PO. As previous reply states, decide what you want to be filed under. We used surname only as first line so that anyone with the same name on passport could pick up. This worked well everywhere in Europe, S. America and Caribbean. By using only one UK address, and asking friends to write to that addres only, we knew that with that one envelope we had the lot. Said friend also presented our credit card bills to bank for payment by prior arrangement. Nowadays they are done by direct debit and I keep an eye on the statements via the internet so that I can hopefully spot any irregularity before too late. Hope this helps.

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[RPC]

Check "mail forwarding" on the following website

www.onpassage.com

this site has a lot of useful information for cruisers including mail forwarding info.

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