will the froggies object?

[Birdseye]

off to France in a few days, complete with a mix of out of date and in date (just) flares and a liferaft past its inspection date. its my neck and I'm quite happy to ignore the "sell by dates" - my life raft didnt suddenly become useless on June 2006, and I know from past new years eve's at the club that flares still work when 20 years out of date.

so am I likely to get aggravation from the frogs? should I leave life raft and old flares at home? that would make me more legal but less safe. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

any practical experience? I'm half sure I read somewhere about somebody having this sort of problem on the continent.

 

[canalcruiser]

I met a customs agent inland that was being transfered to deal with the Brits!!He was very pro Britain and said there are a lot of dugs comeing out of the UK but by non Brits that have a English passport

He also said that the customs read web sites!So calling them Frogs might just give cause to have a closer look at an English flaged boat!

They have never controled my flares nor liferaft as we dont have rules about eqipment needed for differant distances offshore you wont have any problem with the sell by date

If they come abord you could call them "sir" not watyawant froggy!!

 

[tcm]

froggie inspctions and fines : practical advice

Froggies registered boats are subject to very specific rules about what equipment they must have on board, and the cops can arrive for an inspection any time they like. The usual time they like is 8am-10am weekdays.

It is debatable as to how legal it is for them to impose fines on a uk skipper/boat, and since it's debatable you'll need a lawyer to contest the arbitrary fines they can and do impose. I was once fined 100 quid for not having original boat papers on board a uk boat even tho the originals were only ten miles away, held for safekeeping at home marina. I could have argued all day, or paid the fine and clear off. I paid.

French police can do the same to cars too, so a dangerously-overloaded car frinstance can just be fined on the spot. Not paying or refusing involves plenty of waiting in police stations, and eventually paying.

Yes, technically the flares used in french registered boat should be in date otherwise i spose that techincally they aren't flares. But no such rule exists for uk boats,so no flares is fine, as is non-working flares or out of date flares. But the froggies wll not like it.

HOWEVER, there is no law stopping you from re-dating flares yourself whilst in the uk! Oh yes. Sure, it might have no validity whatsoevr, and even be illegal for anyone to dare sell such flares. But that's not what you intend to do. You only plan to keep the flares on board and in that regard on your uk boat you are entirely in your rights to inspect anything and everything, and sign all the bits of paper you fancy.

So, you may inspect the flares, or any other item on the boat, and sign and apply a little "Checked" sticker to it together with the new expiry date in say three years time. It would be nice for these to have little grid of dates of "next inspction due" asa well, like a fire extinuisher thing whihc itself is rubbish cos i had fire extinguishers checked for real and then I tried one and it didn't work.

Yes, this almost dotty boat self-certification wheeze might well mean absolutely nothing to anyone but you, of course, but it willimpress the heck out of the french gendarmes.

Is this legal? Well, it is definitely not illegal. But it is one daft set of arbitrary on-the-spot rulemakers against your own daft premeditated rulemaking.

You should bear inmind that foreiugn officials are there to while away the time insopecting things when they have not a cue about what they'e looking at. But if looks good, they can write down the details on their forms whichprove they haven't beingsittingsipping a Pastis all morning. The more forms the better. Whereas being arsey and arguing in bad french that ah youare outside their jurisdiction isnt liked at all, and from personal experience will get a fine.

 

[Major Catastrophe]

Re: froggie inspctions and fines : practical advice

[ QUOTE ]
Whereas being arsey and arguing in bad french that ah youare outside their jurisdiction isnt liked at all, and from personal experience will get a fine.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well there goes my defence, especially as I was going to play Land of Hope and Glory on my iPod at the same time.

It is interesting reading how our 'EU Partners' arbitarily apply their laws, and I am thinking about Portugal in particular, with their, 'We don't care if you have paid the VAT back in Blighty, pay it again you damn foreigner' attitude.

When do we achieve 'European wide harmony'?

 

[landaftaf]

if you want to really piss them off, fly their flag upside down and look them in the eye with a cheeky knowing grin on your face /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[tcm]

In my experience, the french are absolutely fine about anyone flying their flag upside down...

 

[landaftaf]

thats probably because they dont know you are doing it deliberately /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[sailbadthesinner]

Re: froggie inspctions and fines : practical advice

you could play them your favourite episode of Sharpe for them to watch
while you look for the papers.
they'd like that

 

[raquet]

[ QUOTE ]
In my experience, the french are absolutely fine about anyone flying their flag upside down...

[/ QUOTE ]I always make a point of flying my French courtesy flag upside down. Nobody has ever complained yet. On a slightly more serious note when I reflagged my boat (French to UK) the very friendly man in the Affaires Maritime office was disappointed that I chose not to retain the French nationality. However he agreed that the UK flag was less onerous a burden and avoided all the requirements for signalling mirrors, wooden bungs etc. Many French people register their boats in Belgium for this reason. In my experience the French authorities are universally friendly and polite - mind you I have never called them froggies nor tried to con them with bizzare tricks.

 

[tcm]

Bizarre tricks

I spose that was a sideswipe at me. Not very bizarre - and their own "trick" was to apply french regulations to a uk-registered boat. (Even) I wouldn't go as far as pretending that french (or any other nations) officials are *universally* polite and friendly.

 

[Robin]

We have been boarded by Douanes many times both in harbour, at anchor and at sea and they have never bothered with things like flares and liferaft certificate dates, just registration papers and passports, although one time they did read the log. We have always found them to be very courteous and efficient but then we have always treated them with respect and not 'attitude'. I suspect that those who have had problems with French officialdom maybe had boats that looked as if they were badly maintained and/or had people on them with an attitude problem, thus inviting the kind of retaliation vis a vis flare dates or liferaft certs that gets reported as an incident purely on the basis of 'jobsworth frogs. ruined our day.....

 

[Barr Avel]

Re: Bizarre tricks

I am still amazed by people who go travelling abroad, by boat or otherwise, and who believe that because they're British they know best and should be immune from customs and regulations in that country (I am not disputing the fact that French boat safety regulations do not apply to UK flagged boats).

To be honest, calling French people 'frogs' or 'froggies' is likely to do nothing but attract utter contempt. Wouldn't it be nice if as a nation we could grow up a bit and move on from this childish name calling? After all the rest of Europe has.

Marc.

 

[raquet]

Re: Bizarre tricks

[ QUOTE ]
I wouldn't go as far as pretending that french (or any other nations) officials are *universally* polite and friendly.

[/ QUOTE ]Neither would I. Nor did I.

 

[sarabande]

Ummm....

"fly their flag upside down"

but but their flag is is mirror image when it's upside down , so no difference.

Belgium, Germany Uk, yes, France Non !

 

[tcm]

Re: Bizarre tricks

well, yes you did really. You preened yourself at your lovely manners, and linked your lovely manner to lack of fine.

Our fine was imposed after very polite agreement for them to inspect, us speaking and welcoming in french, kids playing downstairs etc. But they flatly refused to accept a copy and wouldn't entertain the imploring request (by phone) of the french harbournmaster at the home marina with original docs just twenty minutes away.

 

[landaftaf]

Re: Bizarre tricks

you seem to forget that - by and large, the brits like to tease the frogs about everything ...... from girls with hairy armpits to calling them 'cheese eating surrender monkeys'.

same as they like to tease us brits by issuing fines whenever they can and calling us 'rosbeefs'

in fact, if you scratch the surface the frogs are brits (as the brits conquered much of known france) and the brits are mainly frogs since good old william popped over and conquered us in 1066, and decided to import his cronies to strengthen his gene pool.

so all in all, I would say the brits and french get on ok - all things considered.

in fact one of my best mates is french /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif - and he has a sense of humour too /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[tcm]

Suspect otherwise as youwish, but we too were very polite etc but were still fined. More fluent french speakers than I also helped "bat our corner", to no avail.

 

[landaftaf]

aha - you have spotted the conundrum, its often the knowing smarmy smirk which gives the game away to these gallic charmers /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
they just dont spot the reason for it /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[benjenbav]

Re: Bizarre tricks

I once heard a story about les douanieres being ticked off at length in quite excellent french by an English skipper for the crime of walking on his teak in black boots. No idea what happened to him. Devil's Island, maybe?

 

[l'escargot]

Re: Bizarre tricks

[ QUOTE ]
....To be honest, calling French people 'frogs' or 'froggies' is likely to do nothing but attract utter contempt. Wouldn't it be nice if as a nation we could grow up a bit and move on from this childish name calling? After all the rest of Europe has.

Marc.

[/ QUOTE ]
I would dispute that. I have heard as many references to "les rosbifs" in certain parts of France as I have "froggies" - usually good humoured.