Shotgun on board?

[lpdsn]

An American cruiser we knew carried a M16 and pirogue of the Venezuelan coast approached and he fired a warning burst and they turned off.

Would probably work on the harbour master at Beaulieu too.

 

[steve yates]

Sailing Anarchy might be your best bet for that question. Lots of gun tottin' Yanks.

Consensus however seems to be that anything short of twin large calibre machine guns either side of the cockpit is a liability if it gets to shooting and you're safer being unarmed.

Dont think unarmed will work with polar bears

 

[AntarcticPilot]

Dont think unarmed will work with polar bears

Visitors to Svalbard are REQUIRED to carry a rifle, precisely because of the danger of polar bears. However, you can hire them in Longyearbyen. I don't know if Greenland and Canada have similar requirements, but it would seem sensible even if not required.

 

[KellysEye]

>That said I've heard stories of yanks that carry all sorts of guns all over the place and customs in various countries turning a blind eye providing it doesn't leave the boat.

You must declare the gun on arrival and pass it to customs until you leave.

 

[Normalfornorfolk]

>That said I've heard stories of yanks that carry all sorts of guns all over the place and customs in various countries turning a blind eye providing it doesn't leave the boat.

You must declare the gun on arrival and pass it to customs until you leave.

You don't want to believe all the stories you're told, kelly, nor repeat them too dogmatically before checking them...

This is hardly a comprehensive list but shows how differently countries react to weapons.

http://www.thecoastalpassage.com/guns_aboard.html

Bear in mind the above link only provides very general info regarding what are commonly lumped together as "firearms". In UK at least, and possibly in other places too, this definition does not include shotguns, which this thread is about. Shotguns may well be (and certainly should be) regarded in quite a different way to rifles and pistols just as they are in UK. It's gonna be a complicated bsiness to find out for sure! Look what happens if you try to import a weapon into Mexico!

 

[macd]

You don't want to believe all the stories you're told, kelly, nor repeat them too dogmatically before checking them...

This is hardly a comprehensive list but shows how differently countries react to weapons.

http://www.thecoastalpassage.com/guns_aboard.html

The text following ">" is Kelly's way of marking a quote lifted from another post. He declines to do it any other way. He's equally fond of sweeping generalisations.

 

[Metabarca]

I can only add my tuppence worth with regard to Patagonia. I don't know the legal issues in Argentina and Chile, but I do know that a gun down there would be useless for anything other than birds. Guanaco is edible (and good) but you won't see any unless you're prepared to spend a long time stalking. Most of the birdlife tastes of fish, which is undoubtedly what has saved it. Given that a lot of people go there to look at birds, you would not be welcome (to put it mildly), if you started blasting away at them. And given that ducks and teals there are very tame, not very sporting either.

 

[Jeannius]

I feel embarrassed bringing this up and don't want to appear like a gun loving crazy. However I own and have a shotgun in the UK. All registered, licensed and securely in a cabinet.

I heard or read someone saying that shotguns are treated differently when long term cruising and generally acceptable to carry on board if secured correctly.

I'll be heading for West Africa and then either Patagonia or Alaska and considered keeping cheap disposable shotgun aboard... I.e something that is not a big loss if confiscated.

Anyone have any experience in this matter?

I went around the world on a World Cruising Club event that had many different nationalities. The only people known to have guns aboard was of course American and they had to surrender them on arrival at most countries. Funnily enough they were the only boat robbed on the entire circumnavigation and it happened while tied up on the police dock in Vanuatu before they'd cleared in and still had the guns aboard. They slept through the robbery, fortunately, as if they'd woken up they'd have shot someone and would probably have still been in Vanuatu, now, seven years later.

Not worth the hassle.