Six years on from the transition period ending, you would think we British sailors would have the new rules sorted. We have not. I run into the same five mistakes every season, made by experienced people who crossed to France for decades without a thought and assume nothing has really changed. It has. Here are the five that catch people out, the actual numbers behind them, and what I do instead.
Mistake 1: assuming you can still spend the summer in France
This is the big one. Before Brexit a Brit could cruise France from May to September and nobody counted. Now a British passport is a third-country document, and you are limited to 90 days inside the Schengen area in any rolling 180-day period.
A full cruising summer is more than 90 days. People do the sum wrong because they treat it as a calendar reset, but the 180-day window slides: each day you count back 180 days and total your presence. The fix is either to keep the trip under 90 days, to break it with a return to the UK (which is outside Schengen, so it genuinely stops the clock) and a re-entry once your window allows, or to apply for a French long-stay visa in advance. I plan every season around the days now, not the weather. The mechanics, with worked examples, are in the Schengen 90/180 day rule for boaters.
Mistake 2: thinking your boat lost its EU VAT status, or that it kept it
Both errors happen, in opposite directions. Some owners panic and assume a UK boat can never be VAT-paid in the EU again. Others assume their old VAT-paid status carried over untouched. Neither is reliably true.
The blunt position: a UK-flagged boat in EU waters is now treated as a non-EU boat, and UK residents cannot use the EU temporary admission scheme. So to keep a UK boat in the EU long-term you generally have to establish EU VAT status, unless the boat qualifies for relief. Where it gets useful is on the UK side: the UK government waived the three-year time limit on Returned Goods Relief for recreational boats from 1 January 2022, which means a UK boat coming home is not re-charged VAT on return regardless of how long it was away, provided ownership has not changed and there were only running repairs while abroad.
What I tell people is: find out, in writing, what status your boat actually holds, and carry the evidence. Do not assume. The detail of proving it is in the VAT status of a boat in EU waters.
Mistake 3: keeping the boat in France and forgetting the boat has a clock too
Owners who base a UK boat in France often focus entirely on their own 90 days and forget the vessel's customs position. The boat has its own time limit. A non-EU boat can sit in EU waters under temporary admission for 18 months without import VAT or duty, after which it must leave EU waters briefly, in practice 24 hours, before a new 18-month period starts.
The catch for Brits is the eligibility wrinkle in mistake 2: temporary admission is designed for non-EU residents, and UK residents do not straightforwardly qualify for it the way an American owner does. This is exactly the kind of grey area where a five-minute conversation with a customs adviser saves a five-figure VAT bill. If you are wrestling with how long a non-EU boat can lawfully stay, read keeping a non-EU boat in France beyond 18 months before you commit to a long-term berth.
Mistake 4: not clearing in properly, or clearing in the wrong place
Pre-Brexit you could make landfall anywhere. Now a boat arriving from the UK is arriving from a third country, and you must clear in at a designated port of entry where Border Police and Customs can process you.
The mistake I see is people anchoring in a quiet bay, going ashore for dinner, and treating that as arrival. It is not. The genuinely good news, which many Brits have not caught up with, is the June 2024 national protocol that lets a growing list of ordinary Channel and Atlantic marinas check third-country yachts in and out by emailed forms instead of a trek to the ferry terminal. It has made clearance far less painful. But you still have to do it, and at an approved point. Where, and how, is set out in French ports of entry: where you must clear in.
A second-order error here: turning up at the clearance office in August without booking. Many require an appointment in peak season, and the office is often inside a commercial or ferry port, not next to your marina. Phone ahead.
Mistake 5: ignoring the new biometric system
This is the 2025-2026 change that British sailors keep dismissing as "for airports". It is not. The EU Entry/Exit System (EES) began its phased rollout on 12 October 2025 and is due to be fully operational by 10 April 2026. For non-EU travellers, which now includes every British crew member, it replaces the passport stamp with a digital record: a facial image and fingerprints on first entry, then an automatic count of your Schengen days.
The practical effect is twofold. First, your 90-day count is now machine-enforced, so the casual overstay that a distracted officer once missed is logged. Second, on your first EES entry you have to register biometrics in person, which is hard to do at a pontoon, so it reinforces the need to clear in at a proper port of entry.
And looking ahead, ETIAS, the online travel authorisation for visa-exempt nationals including Brits, is now expected to launch in the last quarter of 2026 at a fee of 20 euros, valid for three years. It is a quick online pre-screen, not a visa, but you will need it before you travel once it is live. Carrying a British passport no longer means turning up and waving.
The bonus mistake: letting documents lapse on the boat
This one underpins all five. Pre-Brexit, sailing to France was so routine that many of us let the document folder go stale. Insurance certificates expired and got renewed but never reprinted for the boat, the registration sat at home, the radio licence was somewhere. None of that mattered when you could turn up and nobody asked.
Now every official interaction, clearance, a spot check by the Gendarmerie Maritime, an insurance query after a knock, depends on producing current paperwork on demand. I keep a single waterproof folder aboard with the boat registration, a current insurance certificate that actually shows the present year, the VAT or status evidence, the ship radio licence, and the crew passports gathered before each passage. The cost of assembling it is one rainy afternoon. The cost of not having it is a delayed clearance, a refused insurance claim, or a conversation with an officer that goes on far longer than it should.
The other half of this is competence paperwork. France does not demand a national qualification from a visitor on their own private boat in coastal waters, but carrying an International Certificate of Competence smooths insurance and any official exchange, and it is the document most cruising sailors abroad rely on. If you have one, keep it in the folder. If you have let it lapse, renew it before the season.
The pattern behind all five
Every one of these mistakes comes from the same root: assuming the boat and the British sailor still belong to the EU. They do not. The boat is non-EU goods, the sailor is a third-country national, and France now has automated systems that treat both accordingly. Plan around your 90 days, know your boat's VAT status on paper, mind its 18-month customs clock, clear in at an approved port, and accept that biometrics are part of cruising France now. None of it stops you going. It just stops you getting caught out.
Sources: European Commission (EES timeline), Migration and Home Affairs (ETIAS launch and fee), RYA and Rightboat (temporary admission, VAT and Returned Goods Relief).
