POSITION REPORT – Cruz Bay, St. John (BVI)

YOTREPS: YES
TIME: 2014/04/13 10:13
LATITUDE: 18-20.01N
LONGITUDE: 064-47.35W
MARINE: NO
WIND_SPEED: 15
WIND_DIR: E
CLOUDS: 40%
VISIBILITY: 25
BARO: 1014
AIR_TEMP: 30.0C
COMMENT: Beach House – ANCHORED – Cruz Bay, St. John (USVI)

Well, I\’m a little red faced at the moment. My experience is, \”the bigger the country, the easier customs and immigration is\”.
That turned out NOT TO BE THE CASE today! Beach House entered US Territorial waters for the first time in 6 years and 4 months.
We went ashore to check in and were \”mugged\” by US Customs. They would not let Nikki enter the USA as once she had been in the US for 90 days,
she is required to leave (which she did) and re-enter… \”On a COMMERCIAL carrier\”. That means commercial vessel or aircraft. NOT a private boat.
As such, we had to LEAVE the USVI, and return to Soper\’s Hole, BVI – fortunately less than 2 hours of back-tracking.

We have re-checked in, Nikki has been removed from the crew list. Tomorrow morning, she will take a Ferry Boat (Commercial craft) and enter Cruz Bay where her Visa Wavier will then take effect for another 90 days. I will bring the boat by myself to Cruz Bay where I will solo check in, meet Nikki who will be arriving before me and re-add her to the crew list. This does mean that we will have to be in Florida by July 15th, so she can re-enter the US and depart as planned for South Africa and Australia. I will join her a few months later; most likely in \”OZ\”.

YES, there will be a blog on this nonsense. I\’m embarrassed for our bureaucracy. The Customs officers were \”following the letter of the law\” and quite frankly, being shameful and handled us very poorly. More later, all is well.
Scott and Nikki