It’s customary
Yesterday was a big “customs” day for us. For one reason, because we both cleared out of a country, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and cleared into another one, Carriacou/Grenada. The second reason this is significant is that it should be quite a while before we have to do it again. That is, until either the end of H-Season when we head back north or we get bored of Grenada and decide to venture a bit south of there. Yes, clearing into Carriacou makes us all legal to stay in Grenada, our planned cruising grounds until November.
John, a regular reader here, asked us on Facebook if we were now out of the hurricane zone. The hurricane zone, aka “The Box,” may be defined differently by different insurance companies. I checked our policy and see that it reads that we must “be in Grenada or south of 12 and a half degrees (north latitude).” Seeing as we are currently at 12.29?N, I guess we’re cool, at least in their eyes anyway.
Clearing customs may be one of the things that cruisers-in-planning most stress about. The truth is that we found the entire process pretty painless and simple. To start, you will often read that only the Captain is to go to shore to clear into a new country. Even when we read that in the guide books, we ignored it and Rebecca came with me. We just weren’t interested in making two trips to shore, and we were confident that the officials wouldn’t make a fuss about it. Also, even though I may look a bit like a hippy these days, both Rebecca and I dressed appropriately for the officials, her in a skirt and me in a nice pair of dressy shorts and a collared shirt. We made sure that we always had the necessary documentation with us when we visited them (passports, boat registration, clearance from previous port if required), made sure that we were polite and were generous with the “Yes Sirs” and “No Sirs.” I also suggest that you try to remember to bring your own pen, and of course, don’t forget your $$$!
When clearing out of St. Vincent and The Grenadines, we anchored in Clifton on Union Island. The anchorage was tight and we ended up with a mere 1.5 feet under our keel. As you can imagine, we were anxious to do the customs thing and get out of dodge. When the immigration lady at the port went on an extended break, we took the short walk to the airport to clear out.
We are here, anchored near the green circle!
Another thing people stress about, including ourselves, is courtesy flags. This subject is way overblown in my opinion! We had a couple of flags when we set out (US, Bahamas), were given a couple on the way south (DR, Dutch – Thanks Allen!), painted a French one and bought a Grenadian flag just a short time ago. Oh, and we had the yellow Q (Quarantine) flag. Outside of that, we just never worried about it, and neither did anyone else. I recommend that you neither stress about this, nor spend a bunch of money and time on it. It’s just not that vital IMO, especially if you’re only going to be in a country for a day or two, like many of the stops heading down island.
We won’t have to do the flag swapping thing again for a while.
Grenada, here we come!
Woo hoo … ya’ll made it! As a follower since before your “bon voyage” this seems to have come so quickly in some ways, yet ya’ll have covered a lot of ground in the meantime. Good to know that the whole flag thing isn’t that important. Congratulations on making it there … ya’ll have been truly inspiring! Now what are you gonna do with yourselves for the next few months?! =)
Relax!
I looked back to some of your earliest posts. Your attitudes, skills and knowledge have changed wonderfully since then.
Well done, you have been to dozens of wonderful places and still made it all the way down to ‘hurricane safety’. And it is still fifty days less than a year that you have been cruising.
I hope you are both quietly proud.
Mike
Thanks Mike. I think it’s impossible not to grow through the process of traveling this far.
H season has arrived.
Adrain is churning up the Pacific side.
Nothing cooking on the Atlantic side yet.
Yet!
I know Al said when he was in Trinidad if you dressed appropriately and we super polite and showed respect you never had a problem. In fact he said, he was called to the counter to be waited on before others who had been in line before him but who were in bad shorts and dirty tee shirts. They just expect, and deserve respect, like any one else, anywhere else. Your photos are awesome.
Thanks Jennifer. We may end up visiting Trini at some point in the near future.