Immigration Adventure and Boat Details

Well, it is one of those days when it would be nice to light a fire and curl up with a good book - if we were in colder country of course. It is Sunday morning and today looks like it may be a steady rain for a while (as opposed to the usual daily 3 minute downpour and then sun - and maybe another downpour later) so we thought we would update our latest scrape/adventure/learning experience.


First the adventure - when we flew into BVI they asked us at immigration how long we were staying. Of course our heads were still in Canadian mode so we had a schedule - and that schedule would have us leaving BVI on or before February 12th. We were aware as time went on that the deadline was the 12th, BUT we also went to the USVI and had to check out of the BVI to do that. Assumption coming - if we leave and then come back, we start a new visa dateline. NOT SO!!!

Anyway, the evening of the 13th we were talking to a couple of friends we met and somehow this topic came up. We then learned that if you leave and come back before your original deadline comes up, you are still under the original timeline. Uh-oh. Of course both of these guys had horror stories to tell. Tom had gone in to extend his visa prior to it expiring and he said it took him over 6 hours to get through. Sven, trying to be supportive, told us that maybe we would just get a fine - but DON"T get involved with the BVI legal system if we could help it because ........etc etc. They said to take all the paperwork we had with us when we went in, including plane tickets, boarding passes and so on.

Back to the boat we go, both in a somewhat "nervous" state. We knew where all of our stuff was except for our flight paperwork. Of course any other time we have taken a flight, we have religiously kept all of that stuff for Cheryl’s scrapbooking but this time - no, no, no.
To say we spent a restless night would be a vast understatement, but bright and early on Valentine's Day, off we go, loaded down with every piece of paper we thought might remotely be connected to the problem.

Long story about to be cut short, after a 30 minute wait we were ushered into the office of Miss Collins, whose first words were "Happy Valentine's Day". Before we even had a chance to try to explain why we were 2 days past our visa time, she suggested it was probably an oversight. She asked us why we needed an extension and on being informed it was to get some work finished on the boat, she gave us her fax number, told us to have our work person fax what he was doing and an approximate time frame to her and when that came in, she would straighten things out. As luck would have it, when we called George, our electrician, he was across the street working on a boat in the Roadtown Marina and he came right over and signed his name to the appropriate letter. Two and one half hours after we started, we were finished. Of course when we got back to the Marina, we had to let Tom and Sven (both Americans) know they needed to change citizenships!!!!


There are those of you who are may be wondering what boat life is really like. We have decided to take the next few blogs to explain, one topic at a time, what living on board a 49 ft. home is like.

For the first installment we thought we would let you know about storage. One thing about boat builders, particularly of offshore boats, they take advantage of every inch of space. We were talking with our neighbours and they mentioned they had 70+ storage compartments and they had to keep a list of what they had where so they could find anything they might need in a timely fashion. We had already started a similar inventory, but had not finished and had no idea how many separate storage compartments we had so we counted them today.

We have the following storage space – 23 – 10”drawers, 4 – 20”drawers, 3 hanging closets, 28 various sized cupboards with doors, 12 open cupboards with shelves, and 10 various sized compartments either under the seats or in the floor. These do not include the engine room or the compartments under the beds and seats in the salon where the gas tanks, water tanks, water heater and batteries are stored. As well, on deck there are two compartments on the foredeck where ropes and fenders are stored and 3 on the aft deck for more ropes, hose and sails etc. We also have a small compartment on the starboard side where the propane tanks for the stove are stored.








Under the companionway going up stairs there are cupboards, access to the engine room and room to store two garbage containers. All in all we have a lot of space for storage.





Next installment will be the galley.