How to navigate Caribbean customs and immigration

The Caribbean islands manage their borders in a variety of ways, and all have their own idiosyncrasies. Simon Hardaker helps guide you through the many varied rules

- Words and images: Simon Hardaker

There are great pilot guides written by the likes of Doyle and constantly updated online resources like Noonsite, noforeignland and Navily to help yacht skippers visiting the Caribbean to navigate their way through the customs and immigration process.

What you'll actually find in each customs and immigration office is a bit of a lottery, which this article will hopefully prepare you for.

Most of the islands are relatively small; you could cruise around each of them in a day or two if you really wanted to. If you aim to see as much and as many of them as possible during what might be a single season, you'll end up sailing between islands every few days and frequently treading the sometimes tortuous and ambiguous path through border control.

SailClear, an online system launched in 2013, now operates in about 20 Caribbean islands. It costs US$25 annually to register and brings some uniformity to the customs and immigration process and shortens the time needed in their various offices. It doesn't cover all the Caribbean islands, and each island seems to apply it in slightly different ways. The website is a bit slow and clunky, but once all the details about the yacht, the crew, and how much rum is aboard are all entered, most of the questions that officials want to know are answered. The web form notifying yacht arrival time and date should be completed 24 hours ahead of arrival. Doing this gives skippers an identification number to provide to the officials to start the process when you get to their office.

FRENCH ISLANDS PROCESS