A crew list is a boring sheet of A4 right up to the moment a Police aux Frontieres officer asks for it and you have not got one. I learned that on a delivery into Cherbourg in 2023 with a mixed crew: two Brits, one Australian, one Norwegian. The skipper before me had always crossed with an all-EU crew and never needed the document. The officer was friendly but firm. No list, no faster way through. We stood in the ferry terminal office writing one out by hand while the tide we wanted to catch ran away from us.
This piece is the version of that lesson I wish someone had handed me first.
What a French crew list actually has to contain
There is no glossy official template you must use. What the Border Police want is a single document that lets them tie each body aboard to a passport. So your crew list needs, for every person:
- Full name and surname, spelled as on the passport
- Nationality
- Date and place of birth
- Passport number
- Function aboard (skipper, crew, guest)
Print it, sign it as skipper, and carry a couple of copies. I keep one in the document folder and a photo of it on my phone. If you arrive somewhere that clears yachts by email rather than in person, that same information is what you paste into the form.
Which crew need what
The split that matters in France post-Brexit is EU versus non-EU.
EU and EEA crew (French, Dutch, German, Irish and so on) move freely. They carry a passport or national ID card, they are not counted against any day limit, and they do not trigger the biometric process.
Non-EU crew, and that now includes British passport holders, are third-country nationals. They are subject to the Schengen short-stay rules, their days are counted, and from late 2025 their entries and exits are recorded biometrically. If you are skippering with a British crew, treat every one of them as a visiting foreigner on the clock, because that is exactly what the French system now does. The mechanics of the day count are worth understanding before the season, and the Schengen 90/180 day rule for boaters lays it out with worked examples.
The 90/180 rule, because it bites crew hardest
Non-EU crew can spend at most 90 days inside the Schengen area in any rolling 180-day window. The window is not a calendar reset on 1 January, it slides. Every day you count back 180 days and add up your presence. Crew who join for a fortnight here and a fortnight there across a long season can quietly burn their allowance and not realise until they are over.
This is the single thing I check before signing anyone on for a French leg: how many Schengen days have you already used this window? A crew member who turns up with 80 days already spent is a liability, not help.
Where you clear in, and the email shortcut
A yacht arriving in France from a third country has to clear in at a designated point. The formal name is a PPF port, a port with an established Police aux Frontieres presence where passports can be processed and, under the EES, biometrics captured.
The good news arrived in June 2024. Under a national cooperation protocol, a growing number of ordinary marinas on the Channel and Atlantic coasts can now welcome third-country yachts and check them in and out using emailed forms, rather than forcing every crew to physically front up at a ferry terminal. It has taken a lot of friction out of the process. It does not, however, mean you can skip clearance. You still notify, you still send the crew list and passport details, you still get a record made. The full picture of which ports do what is in French ports of entry: where you must clear in.
One practical warning that cost me that Cherbourg tide: the clearance office is often nowhere near the marina, frequently sits inside the commercial or ferry port, and is not open around the clock. In July and August many require you to book a slot in advance. Phone ahead.
The biometric change you cannot ignore
The EU Entry/Exit System (EES) started its phased rollout on 12 October 2025 and is scheduled to be fully operational by 10 April 2026. For non-EU crew this is the big shift. The passport ink stamp is being replaced by a digital file: a facial image and fingerprints taken on the first entry, then an automatic record of each entry and exit and the running total of Schengen days.
In plain terms, the first time a non-EU crew member enters under EES they must register biometrics in person at a border point. That is hard to do at a quiet marina pontoon, which is one more reason the in-person PPF clearance still matters for first entries. After registration, subsequent crossings are faster, but the system is watching the day count automatically, so there is no more vagueness about how long someone has been in the zone.
Further out, ETIAS, the online pre-travel authorisation for visa-exempt nationals, is now expected to go live in the final quarter of 2026 at a 20 euro fee, valid for three years. British and other visa-exempt crew will need it once it is operational. It is filled in online before travel and is not a substitute for clearance or for the crew list.
Mixed crews are where it gets fiddly
The cleanest crew to clear is all-EU or all-non-EU. The headaches come with a mix, which is most cruising boats these days: a British skipper, a Dutch first mate, an American guest. The EU members do not count against any limit and skip the biometric step. The non-EU members each have their own 90-day clock and each get registered. So on the same boat, the same arrival, you can have two people waved through and two people processed in detail.
Practically, I list everyone on the one crew list regardless of nationality, because the officer wants a full manifest of who is aboard, then let them sort which passports trigger which process. I do not try to pre-judge it. What I do flag clearly is the function of each person, because a paid crew member and a non-working guest can be treated differently, and an officer would rather see that stated than have to ask.
Crew changes mid-cruise are the other trap. If someone flies home from France and a replacement flies in, that is a clearance event in its own right for the person joining or leaving the Schengen zone. You cannot quietly swap a body on the crew list between ports and assume nobody notices. Under the automated EES count, arrivals and departures of non-EU crew are exactly what the system is built to record.
My standing routine for a non-EU crew
Before the boat moves I confirm every crew member has a passport valid well beyond the trip, ask each one how many Schengen days they have already used, and type a single clean crew list. I phone the destination clearance office to check opening hours and whether a booking is needed. On arrival I have the folder ready: boat papers, insurance, the crew list, and the stack of passports in passport-number order so the officer can work through them fast.
None of this is hard. It is just the kind of admin that feels optional until the one time it is not, and then it costs you a tide, a marina booking, or worse. If you are also bringing the boat itself in from outside the EU, pair this with arriving in France from outside the EU: what to declare, because the goods and the boat get their own conversations with Customs.
Sources: Noonsite and RYA (French crew list and PPF clearance), European Commission (EES timeline), Migration and Home Affairs (ETIAS launch and fee).
