Back To The Boatyard

Now is the winter of our damp discontent made glorious summer (or at least Spring) by…the advent of a serious and active boat chore list.

Also, by lengthening days (it is nice to have light before 8 am and after 6 pm). And temps that are creeping up and providing a pleasant hint of warmer days to come. But for me, it is mostly the turn of the calendar into March which magically turns a dormant list of Laughing Gull To-Dos into a ravening, needy, thing that demand immediate and sustained attention.

All sailboats have long lists of things that COULD be done. Usually, the items at the top actually have to be done, and items at the bottom are things that it would be nice to do, but don’t really impact safety or key systems (like, looking at my list, “Add screws to better anchor instrument panel”). With re-launch of LG happening late next month it is the To-Dos at the top of my list—things that can only be done with LG out of the water or are a lot easier to do on the hard—that need to happen.

Nothing on this Must Do Now list will surprise any sailboat owner, but to give a sample of what lies ahead: 1) Sand bottom in preparation for new bottom paint (a messy, tedious, job); 2) Replace zinc anodes (these are sacrificial and protect the metal in the boat that matters (e.g. thru-hulls, prop, prop shaft) from electrolysis and stray current by disintegrating instead of the metal that matters; 3) Replace and re-wire primary depth sounder (it went bad just before the 2024 passage to the Caribbean and I preferred to make do with the secondary depth sounder instead of hauling or pulling the faulty sounder while the boat was still in the water—which can get exciting in a bad way); 4) Grease MaxProp; and 5) Mark intervals on anchor chain (the auto counter in the windlass is unreliable and it is a lot easier to mark the chain—so I know how much is out—when I can drop it all on the ground in front of LG instead of into the water); 6) Apply one coat of anti-fouling paint (Crosshaven Boatyard will take care of this one).

This Pre-Launch Priority list isn’t too bad, really, and the idea of scheduling work days at Crosshaven Boatyard whenever the weather is promising makes me happy. Every task completed is one step toward the water, and resumption of the floating life, which I miss. The real suspense will come once LG is re-launched and I try to turn all the systems back on. No complex system likes to lie dormant for long periods of time (“Ships and sailors rot in port,” as they say). How well the space-shuttle complexity of LG’s many systems fared through the winter months will go a long way toward determining whether I make a clean and smooth getaway from the south coast of Ireland, bound for Norway, or whether I end up faffing around waiting on parts and repairs, and wishing I was Larry “Go Simple” Pardey.

Less familiar to many sailors, with regard to my preparations for glorious summer, is the administrative Rubik’s Cube that faces any US citizen on a US-flagged sailboat cruising European waters. I have made it a life goal to do everything possible to reduce time wasted on admin. The bureaucratic Mandarins of the European Union are doing everything they can to foil that dream. Without getting into all the tedious details of tax and residency, the TLDR is that I need to pay attention to two things: how many days I spend in what is known as the Schengen Area, which covers most of Europe (but not all). And how much time Laughing Gull spends in European Union waters before a taxman comes calling for the payment of a Value Added Tax (VAT) of 17-27% of LG’s value (depends on the country).

With Schengen, as a US-citizen, I am allowed to spend a visa-free 90 days maximum in any 180-day period. So I have to track every day I am in a Schengen country and make sure I don’t exceed my 90-day allowance, lest I risk fines, a red tape nightmare, and maybe worse. Luckily, there is an app for that. Once you hit your 90 days you have to spend 90 days outside Schengen to reset the clock.

The whole Schengen thing is a hefty blow to my admin reduction program, because it requires meticulous record-keeping. On the plus side, neither Ireland nor the UK are in Schengen, so avoiding the pain and suffering of a Schengen breach will be easier for me since I am based in Ireland, and will initially sail through UK waters. It’s non-EU cruisers in the Med who really have to do what is known as the “Schengen Shuffle.”

Schengen applies to me as a human. The EU VAT threat applies to Laughing Gull as a sailboat. If LG spends more than 18 months in the EU, she will be considered an import, with VAT due (gleefully declared by some customs official, no doubt). Happily, I can reset LG’s VAT countdown, when needed, simply by arriving and checking into a non-EU country for as little as one day. Apologies to my British friends, but this is an instance where Brexit makes my life easier. Still, keeping clear of a large VAT bill requires? You guessed it: meticulous records. Bah.

I may have some of this wrong, but if I have it right then my plan for 2026 and 2027 should allow for safe navigation between the Scylla of Schengen and the Charybdis of EU VAT. My Schengen clock won’t truly start until I reach Norway in July (I may accumulate the odd day visiting the Continent before I set off on LG), but I will be back to Ireland in September before the Schengen clock goes BOOM. And the EU VAT clock won’t start until I clear into Norway, which will give me until December 2027 (roughly) before it goes BOOM. By then, I will have sailed LG back into UK or Irish waters. No BOOMs for me (I hope).

So far, so good. What really gets tricky is if the next era of LG exploration takes LG into the Med. Apart from having to run the gauntlet of rudder-chewing orcas to get to the Med, once there the clock-resetting options for both Schengen and VAT are fewer and farther between. Montenegro, Turkey, and North Africa come into heavy play, but I have already seen chatter on sailing groups about how hard it is to find sailboat storage, and the insane fees charged. I’ll not waste brain space worrying about the Med now, though. When the time comes, if the red tape and admin threaten to suffocate me or cause me to break out in hives, I can always just sail LG back across the Atlantic. A return to warm winters wouldn’t be so bad.

If you liked this post from Sailing Into The Anthropocene, why not subscribe here (free), and/or hit the share button below? You can also find me on Instagram and BlueSky. (You can find me, but I don’t post much anymore for quality of life reasons).

Share