Third country entry / exit procedures for Cherbourg and Portsmouth 2025
Stephen S writes…
Travelling to and from Europe has undoubtedly got more complicated since Brexit, but some things appear to be working reasonably well – at least on the far side of the Channel.
In theory, the UK requirements should be straightforward too with the introduction of the online pleasure craft form. Once you have set up an account, added a vessel (you will need the “Official number” of the vessel for example 916480 for Carina), added your passenger details (name, passport number, date of expiry, date of birth and gender) you can combine the two in a voyage plan.
One “complication” of note is that the customs section of the form appears to anticipate that you are avoiding paying VAT on your boat! The only option appears to be to say that you don’t need to pay any VAT and then in the “other” box under “reasons why” put something like “Vessel is VAT paid in UK – voyage starts and ends in UK”. When you hit submit, you will receive a confirmation email from Border Force saying “don’t call us, we’ll call you.” In reality, they won’t call you. So far I have had no response to either form I have submitted.
They provide numbers in the help area of the site for the local offices, so I called Portsmouth. Possibly because it was out of office hours (1800), it was replied with an automated message asking me to leave my contact details assuring me that they would get back to me …but that was immediately followed by another automated message saying that the mailbox was full so I couldn’t leave a message. I suspect I’m not the only person that has wondered what to do about their Q flag after a few hours back at home port. I took it down and went home.
PAF, the french equivalent of Border Force, do not have the advantage of the online form. They provide a pdf form which you can find on the (mostly dreadful!) Chantereyne Marina site here. The marina office also hands out blank copies if you need one for your return trip. It is just about possible to complete the form on a device using Acrobat or other pdf reader / editors but they haven’t made it easy as the grey shading of the boxes hides any text you add to it.
In addition to the usual details, you will need your passengers home town. Having scanned the completed form, you email it to dipn50-paf-cic@interieur.gouv.fr.
As the Chantereyne Marina site says, once you have arrived, you should present yourself with all your crew and passports at the marina office at the next available “composting” session (by which they mean, stamping). Times are posted at the marina office and vary according to season. The PAF officers will make a cursory attempt to match your passports to the forms they have printed out from those sent to the email inbox …though they didn’t seem bothered when they couldn’t find the relevant form. They were however a) there and b) friendly. Vive la France!
Things have changed every few months since Brexit so no doubt this is not the final word on the process…