We received an e-mail recently from a couple who hope to sail in Norway this summer. He has an EU passport but she doesn’t. When they approached Norwegian Immigration, they were told they must apply for a “Recreational Sailing Permit”. This was news to us!
Though the regulation is worded in such a way as to imply that any non-Norwegian sailor needs to have one of these permits to enter Norway, our Norwegian contacts have received the following input from Immigration:
- The permit is not required for yachts arriving from another Schengen port.
- The permit is not required for EU/EEZ nationals but they will have to clear in at an approved border crossing station.
- When asked for further clarification, the Department of Immigration acknowledged that the quoted circular is unclear on the matter and reported that they have sent the matter to the Department of Justice for consideration.
If we were entering Norway this season our approach would be to clear in with Immigration on our arrival in Norway (unless we had previously cleared into another Schengen country) and see what happens. If the Recreational Sailing Permit became an issue, then we would refer to the third communication with Immigration as summarized above.
To date our personal interactions with Norwegian Customs and Immigration have been invariably positive. Hopefully this situation will be resolved in the usual pragmatic Norwegian way.
We will post any new information that becomes available here.
Please leave a comment if you have had any experience with this Recreational Sailing Permit.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
We are an American boat currently in Sweden and plan to sail to Norway in 2 weeks. We have also just learned about this new permit and will let you know what our experience with immigration is.
Hi, Linda; We would really appreciate getting information on your Customs experience. Thank you and good luck! Phyllis
I have had extensive communication with the authorities following reports such as yours, and they confirm this to be a huge misunderstanding – the rules are essentially unchanged. I would call it a “huge failure of communication from UDI” but that’s another matter. Make note also that besides the Schengen rules, Norway also has bilateral visa agreements with a long list of countries, i.e. USA, and all these in addition to all EU as well as UK citizens escape any draconian rules.
We were boarded by immigration and customs today. They took exception to our verbal declaration that we had the allowable limit of wine aboard. After a full search we were allowed to continue into Oslo. The folks were very nice but professional. Be careful out there. There was no mention of a cruising permit only a warning that if we wished to keep Pilgrim in Norway for the winter a permit would be required.
Brian
Just a follow up about the special sailing permit. We contacted the UDI directly through email to try to clarify the regulation about the sailing permit. The response is as follows
“Dear Mr and Mrs Noon,
We refer to your e-mail dated 25th May 2010
You do not need a sailing permit as you have already entered the Schengen area.
Please do not hesitate to contact us again if you have any questions.
Best regards
Mabel Killmer
Executive Officer, The Service Unit
The Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI)”
We are sailing to Norway from Sweden – will follow up if our visit becomes eventful.
Thank you to Brian on Pilgrim for some heads up about the boarding – seems quite unusual in this part of the world.
We may shorten our trip to Norway if we encounter difficulties.
Linda Noon
We passed through the TOLL checkpoint yesterday on our way to Oslo. We were boarded and searched. Very professional approach and if you are following the import rules not a problem. We were warned about wintering over without notification but otherwise there was no mention of any sailing permit. We are both Canadian and Pilgrim is Canadian registered. They do not have any process for stamping paper to prove that you have been in Norway (out of the EU). They finally stamped our crew list with an official stamp they dug up. A comment on the Royal Norwegian Yacht Club (KNS). Expensive, no internet although they say they have one and the single dryer doesn’t work … otherwise “interesting” in a non-positive sense.
Sorry that I wasn’t able to respond earlier, but we were launching our boat and then underway.
Thank you to everyone for sharing their experiences with Customs. It appears that things are settling down with the sailing permit issue. We will report if we find out anything further.
Hi everybody,
This year we have sailed from Finland to South Norway,then to Lofotens and back to Baltics again. Our crew consisted of Russians; we keep American registration on the boat and fly American flag, as we have not imported the boat to Russia yet.
We have entered Shengen in Latvia, cleared Norwegian customs in Aalesund (btw there’s a obsolete mentioning of customs in Egersund in the guide, it does not have customs anymore – Stavanger is the closest one).
No mention of Sailing permit; usual customs declaration stamped by customs, that’s all. No additional checks on our way back.
Another Russian boat that sailed this route does not report any problems related to this matter.
I have no specific info to add about the sailing situation in Norway. While possibly very inconvenient, from a security point of view, it makes sense. I have often been aware that although there is tight security at US airports, there is apparently nothing to stop someone sailing from Canada to the US.
As a norwegian citizen with an American wife, I’m wondering 3 things as someone who hopes to go cruising one day:
1) Is it difficult to deal with immigration issues while visiting many foreign ports during a circumnavigation?
2) Is it better to register a boat in Norway or the US?
3) Would having a boat registered in Norway cause a similar situation trying to cruise the US?
Gunnar
Thank you for your comments. For further clarification on why we are concerned about the sailing permit, see our latest posts at http://www.norwegiancruisingguide.com/news/2010/07/norwegian-sailing-permit-bad-news/ and at http://www.morganscloud.com/whatisnew/2010/07/31/the-most-dangerous-thing-on-a-boat/
Fedor, the sailing permit isn’t being enforced as written yet; however, the regulation is on the books, meaning it can be enforced if we don’t encourage the Norwegian Department of Immigration to change the wording.
Gunnar, I can’t really advise on where to register a boat as that’s not our area of expertise, though I think where you plan to cruise would affect your decision on that. As to Immigration issues, requirements vary from country to country. In our latest post, URL given earlier in this comment, I compared sailing permit requirements between various jurisdictions, including the US and EU and Canada. Keeping up with all the Immigration and Customs requirements in various countries does take a lot of managing! Good luck with your dream to go cruising.
Phyllis, I share your concern.
If this new legislation gets enforced in full, especially the part that concerns listing ports of call, this will make cruising in Norway next to impossible!
Norwegian weather often makes you change your mind about next port of call right in the middle of the passage; e.g. I chose to skip Bergen and go to Aalesund instead this year, to use the southerlies for our trip north. On our way back we were forced to stop in Rorvik to sit out the gale.
Sticking to “flight plan” can be extremely dangerous.
I sincerely hope that legislators of truly maritime nation, such as Norway, will understand the problem this new rule is creating.
One alternative I can see: print the contents page of the Cruising cuide and add it to the permit application. Yessir, this is the list of ports where we intend to stop!
“Fedor, the sailing permit isn’t being enforced as written yet; however, the regulation is on the books, meaning it can be enforced if we don’t encourage the Norwegian Department of Immigration to change the wording”
Phyllis, I apologise in advance for correcting you on this: My whole point before is that the regulation is *not* on the books, it is not what the law says, but the “PR” section (I deliberately put “PR” in quotation marks) has put a faulty “interpretation” on the web. After considerable correspondence with them, I am confident they will eventually get it right.
In short, I should put to rest any worry about lodging a “sailing itinerary” or the other ludicrous formulations that began this whole debacle.
Thank you for commenting, Osmund. I agree with you that the majority of Norwegian officials are far too pragmatic to enforce a sailing itinerary; however, it only takes a small percentage, who take the “interpretation” to heart and enforce it, to potentially cause difficulties for sailors (as did the UDI official who told the Australian sailor she needed to file a sailing itinerary 2 months in advance of her arrival in Norway, which is what started this whole discussion). As UDI is planning to rewriting the Circular (or its interpretation?) in the near future, we felt it was a good time to make clear what effect this interpretation would have on foreign sailors and encourage a wording that will hopefully work for everyone. Thank you for encouraging our confidence in that outcome!