Buying Foreign flag vessel

[CarlF]

I did this about 15 years ago with a British documented boat to the US. My strong advise is to just hire a documentation company and let them help you navigate it. In my case the documentation company had to coordinate the "unflagging" of the boat with UK documentation agency and then reflagging to the US. It involved faxes to "port captains". To them it was routine and easy - but I would have made a mess of it.

I can't remember the company I used 15 years ago but they were in Annapolis. For more recent boats I've used a Newport one who is excellent. While I haven't personally imported a boat with them, I would expect they would do fine.

Marine Documentation Inc

At least at the time, the import duty I paid was very low. Either 1% or 1.5%. Remember that you will likely have to pay a sales tax to some state that will be a much higher percentage than this. Rhode Island has no sales tax on boats. The documentation agent could help in this area.

[jmschmidt]

Thanks for the return comment Whigwam. Sorry I didn't mention that the other guys on the forum must have been thinking of the old NVDC when they told you how responsive they are. That was in times past.

The only thing that is the same today is the people are still nice and helpful if you can get ahold of them. Maybe. Probably should scratch "helpful" but they try.

They don't take calls on Thursdays. They do not return phone calls, answer emails, regular mail or faxes. Just go to their web sight and check how far behind they are finalizing documentation requests. I have a Preferred Ship Mortgage hanging fire for recordation since Oct. 1st. They sent me (by regular mail, even though the have my email address, two phone numbers and a fax number) three cryptic letters that made no sense whatsoever. I called and actually got a live body after a couple of hours on hold (I just put one of my phones on speaker and lay it on the desk until someone answers or I give up.). A very nice lady named "Barbara" came on so I told her about the letters I received from the documentation officer. She said, in no uncertain terms "I'll take care of it, just a minute." She came back on in about 1-2 minutes and said, "I just spoke to the original documentation office and there is no problem. You will (not should) hear confirmation back in 48 hour." Wow, I thought, that's cool.

Now two months after I spoke with "Barbara" I have not received a file stamped copy of the document and their website shows that they haven't even gotten to it yet. This after they raised their renewal fee from -0- to $25 and their abstracts of titles from $25 to $75, to mention just two of their fee increases.