Boat Update and Getting a Long-Stay Tourist Visa from France, Ep. 91

The fourth Nor-Easter storm in as many weeks had Tom and I out skiing deep powder well into the later days of March! We have thoroughly enjoyed our first winter being able to ski mid-week and despite some tough conditions in late January and into February, early season and March have been terrific! To tell the truth, though, it was actually quite helpful to have poor ski conditions mid-winter since we had huge projects standing between us and a summer of successful cruising in the Mediterranean on our new sailboat.

Here’s an update on what we’ve been up to – this video will cover it in some detail or you can read about the details below!

Our boat construction is underway and is right on track to be turned over to us in early May … AND, we have an official hull number. ‘What’s a hull number’, you ask? Well, every boat within a specific boat model is assigned a sequential hull number according to the order the boat is manufactured. The first boat of a new model is hull # 1 and, for as long as that model of boat is created, the hull number continues to incrementally increased! When we looked at the Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 440 last October, we were aboard hull number 3 since the model had just been launched! Our boat will be hull number 40 – I wonder how many Sun Odyssey 440’s will be made!

The shipment of our equipment and gear could be going better but we think we’ll still be ok on timing if nothing further delays progress. The shipping company picked our stuff up on February 16 but our things didn’t make it into a container and on their way away from the US until late March. The projected arrival in Rotterdam is April 6. After arrival in the Netherlands, the shipment will go through customs and then be transported over the road to where our boat will be commissioned and launched, Canet-en-Roussillon on the Mediterranean coast of France. Our boat is scheduled to arrive there in pieces around mid-April and since some of the things we shipped are to be installed on the boat, we hope customs clearance doesn’t take too long!

Finally, the biggest news of all is that we were granted long-stay tourist visas for France so we can stay up to a year if we wanted or needed to. I go into significant detail in the video about all that we needed to supply to convince the French authorities that we wouldn’t be a burden on their society. I understand all of the requirements and was happy to provide the detail. The process was smooth and the people at the French Consulate couldn’t have been more helpful! We are very excited to be able to remain in the waters around the Schengen states for longer than 90 days!

Our previous video on shipping our gear and equipment to France can be viewed here:

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