A trip to the Wallis and Futuna Islands: The bureaucracy of yachting.

A yachtie is more than just a sailor, seaman, or old salt but also a student of international relations. As the wind and fish are free at sea going to a port is not. Let me digress into the basics of international sailing.

There are two key terms to understanding the yactie’s bicameral world – offshore and shore. Offshore denotes the open ocean, international waters, where the ability of one government, state, or country to exercise its sovereignty simply does not exist. Thus, people can do all kinds of crazy stuff in the open ocean – like sell their yacht to evade excessive tax or even attempt to clone human beings. The other term is shore or inland waters. Rivers, lakes, bays, channels are all considered inland waters. As a matter of fact, inland water can be just about anything. Fiji is made up of over 300 islands and all the water between and surrounding could be considered inland for our purposes. Inland waters are governed by a country and thus laws can vary greatly depending on the country.

Typically the yactie is unconcerned about the legality of sailing through a large island group such as Fiji. However, if the yachtie wishes to stop and stretch their legs on a virgin beach for a few days or perhaps go into town for a loaf of bread, then that’s a different story. The yacht must first sail to a city that’s designated as a “port of entry” within the country. Here a customs, immigration, and quarantine officer check the crew and yacht. Again it varies depending on the country, but typically the Captain pays a fee to the officials and then receives a paper indicating the duration the vessel can remain in the country’s waters. This again varies – in Fiji it’s 12 months and then you must leave or pay incredible fines and even risk the boat to confiscation.

Some adventurous spirited sailors come to Savusavu and are pulled into its contagious charm. They live here on their yacht moored along the shore for years, paying only the minimal mooring fee, and basic living costs. But how do they do this and not pay
enormous fines to the Fiji Government? My friends, it’s called sailing to Wallis and Futuna once a year, a French territory some 300 miles north of the Fiji group. That’s a 5 day round trip sail. You see, once a yacht “checks out” of a port of entry – they are considered an international bound vessel and the regulations are no longer effective. In order to return, the vessel must sail to a different country, check-in and out, and then it can come back to our enchanting Savusavu or another port of entry. Not bad eh! It’s the quick and dirty way to maintain a residence in what many consider paradise. It gets better friends. Some yacht owners have thrown in the towel when it comes to actually sailing the vessel and instead hire a captain and crew to take the yacht out of the country and back again. This is a brilliant idea for us crew who love to sail and Captain’s who love deep-sea fishing.

So to the sea again – I’ll be crewing aboard a sloop called Apage, with a very experienced Captain by the name of Curly. You guessed it! We’re going to Futuna and back. Apage’s owners are busy at the moment and the clock is up on the vessel’s stay. It should be good fun. Look for part two “The Voyage” to be out near the end of September. I would also like to thank those who’ve submitted comments and suggestions about what they’d like to see. Please feel free to make requests and I’ll do my best to tell the story. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the following nonsense video. Just a bit of clean beach fun!

Click to play beach video


LINK has been fixed. Thanks for the heads up!