Dear John,
We recently had the misfortune to visit Formentor and avail of their mooring buoy system.
We arrived in our 13.97 Mtr Princess, called on the radio and were allocated a buoy. The cost for one night was 36 Euros -the 14-18mtr price which was non negotiable. (we were less than 14m.)
The mooring was probably 200 mtrs from shore which was further than we would have liked but OK.
7am: awakened to a crunching sound. The wind had dropped during the night and now the metal ring at top of the buoy was scraping the boat from wake or wash. We moved it away and the damage was slight.
11am. Our "friendly" mooring people arrived and demanded another 36 Es. as we were past our 10am allocated time. We declined to pay.
A quick snorkel to check the mooring and we discovered 4-5 meters of chain dragging on the bottom, doing more damage than a properly laid anchor would have done.
So to summarise this rip-off does absolutely nothing for the environment, nothing for boaters, nothing for Mallorca or tourism (our small boat generates 50k Es. per year for the local economy) and at 36 Es. per night a buoy at Formentor is only a fiver less than the fuel quay at Puerto Portals! -and you are not asked to pay again or leave at 10am..
Regards, Ken Bryan
Thanks John for the news.
Itīs great to read all the goings on back in the Med. via The Islander on the internet as I am on the west coast of Canada and missing the life I had there for the past 15 years. Keep up the good news.
Regards
Captain Jeff Engholm
Canadian Luxury Yacht Supply & Service Ltd.
Vancouver, B.C.,Canada- jeffcansail@yahoo.com
Dear John,
Sorry it has taken longer than expected to find the time to sit down & write this letter.
Basically the story goes like this.
I was travelling on the north coast of Spain this summer & the 1st French port I pulled into was St. Jean de Luz. Within an hour of my arrival the French Customs boat came out see me & asked for ships papers, log book etc... which I duly complied with. After going through all paper work they informed that the vessel had not been out of EU waters in the previous 18 months which is law for any non EU registered vessels. I told them that I had been out of the EU 4 times in the last 18 months by visiting Gibraltar, the last time only 2 wks before. They told me that as far as they were concerned Gibraltar WAS part of the EU customs territory which I repeatedly told them it WAS NOT.
They then said that they were placing the vessel under arrest but would release it if I agreed to pay 1.8 million Euros. By this stage they had kept me up all night as they had boarded at 1900hrs & it was now 0900hrs.
After their departure I duly informed the vesselīs owner & lawyers. By late afternoon a fax arrived for me which had been downloaded off the Internet. It was a copy of the EU Customs Code (Article 3 (1)) which clearly stated in bold & I quote "Gibraltar is NOT part of the EUīs customs territory."
Needless to say I was asked to appear at their office the following morning to have the vessel released. After 36 hrs of being under arrest I departed St. Jean de Luz with a rather sour taste in my mouth.
John, I am writing this article to you so that all those other Captains out there running non EU flagged vessels but operating in the EU can download a copy of the EU Customs Code & keep it filed onboard so the same thing never happens again.
I completely understand that the Customs people were only doing their job but obviously were not up to date with all laws concerning customs territories.
Kindest regards,
Anonymous.