Whenever I’ve flown overseas, I’ve naturally enough arrived at an airport fully equipped with all the customs and immigration apparatus required by the host nation. But what happens if I were to choose a less standard method of arrival? What if I have my own yacht? Do I need to make landfall at a designated port of entry? Even if I have the best of intentions with regards to satisfying local legal requirements, is it possible to just rock up to a public wharf in New York, Hong Kong, or Rio and say, “Hey guys, here I am”? Do I need to radio ahead? What’s the deal here?
I only have experience sailing into US and Mexican ports, but here’s my experience. If you sail into a working port or marina, the protocol is to radio the harbor master and ask permission to dock. You may be allowed to use a slip or be assigned a buoy to tie to. In any case, if you just sail on in, tie up, and head to the bar, the person in charge is going to track you down and be very annoyed because you’re essentially double-parked. In this situation, you’d likely fall under much more scrutiny from the authorities than if you play by the rules.
When we’ve sailed into Mexican ports, the authorities have come down to the boat for a quick look-see. In every case, this was a cursory document check much like you get at a border crossing. When we returned to the US, I believe the skipper checked in with the harbor master for customs forms, but again, this was cursory because we didn’t have anything to declare.
This seems pretty slack, and I think it would be easy to exploit this if you wanted to smuggle something, but I don’t think it’s all that different from airline travel. I’ve flown into foreign airports where my bags and I got barely a glance from the customs agents while they stamped my papers. At worst, my group usually cruises through and I get pulled aside for a quick pat-down and bag search (note: never do anything bad if you look like you might be doing something bad).
Every country is different in their laws and then they don’t even enforce them all the time but, in general you can say you have to enter a country by way of designated ports or border crossings where there are police controls. If you arrive at any port which is not so designated and your entry is not therefore legally notified to the authorities, you have pretty much entered the country illegally. The consequences depend on the country and state of things… in Afghanistan you would be accused of being a spy and stoned by the masses.
In general the proper procedure if arriving by private yatch is to contact the prot authorities by radio or other means and have them inspect and do the paperwork before anyone sets foot on land. If no radio the standard thing to do is to anchor out and raise the yellow “Q” flag.
Again, in some countries and instances, a mere radio notification may suffice, in others a full blown inspection of the boat and tons of red tape may be involved. I am sure things in the USA these days are not as easy as they used to be before 9/11.
If you enter a country by some unusual route on foot, say, I believe you are obligated to check in at the nearest border post available. People still occasionally trek between Panama and Colombia through the Darien Gap, where there are no roads (although this considered very dangerous nowadays due to guerrillas and narcos), and that’s the procedure that is followed
I crossed from India into Nepal on foot, though I did cross at a recognized border check post. Which was, BTW, four wooden posts with a thatched roof.
I could have just as easily crossed unnoticed somewhere as the boarder is less than secure, but that would have caused a problem when I tried to leave Nepal by plane.
It took about 2 hours to get across. First, the officer on the Indian side had to inspect all my bags and then copy all the information in my passport, by hand, with a leaky ball point pen, into a very large ledger. This ledger was one of a vast collection, stacked everywhere in the “office”.
At the check post on the Nepali side (garage), I went through basically the same procedure with the added step of waiting 30 minutes while the officer determined which of the rubber (actually wooden) stamps was appropriate to affix in my passport.
Not that I’m complaining, mind you. It was a great experience.