New Turkey Requirement

[goboatingnow]

Originally Posted by yeloya

I've talked to Port authorities in Marmaris to make sure; as Judy said "captains of foreign flagged vessels need only present licensing from their home country and Turkey recognized these licenses on a reciprocal basis, as is required internationally."
Dave also is right; if the country does not require any licence, the captain has to show a kind of evidence to prove this. They said that they know by their previous experience which are the countries that doesn't require a licence, so no problem for those countries. All they check is the boat and the captain are complying with the regulations of their own country.
They also added that sometimes this is not that easy for some large motor yachts; Panama registered boat, with australian captain, american passengers and indian crew..
Cheers
Yeloya

It's important to realise that international recognition of shipping licenses is controlled by the IMO ( a UN body ), this applies to licenses that comply with STCW95 and does NOT apply to leisure vessels. Countries are free to institute any regime they like on leisure boats in their territorial waters. However common sense and the rules of comity usually apply.

Port authorities are often woefully mis-informed on these matters and I would not rely on a particular port authority to get it right.

With leisure licenses, there is no " requirement " to recognise any countries leisure license, as such licenses have no basis in international law. The closest to one is the ICC,which was an attempt to create such a situation, however there are so many holes and issues with ICC recognition as to render it very problematic.

In practice, where countries have a mandatory requirement for their nationals to have tickets. It is prudent to have a recognised certificate with you . I suspect very few yachtsmen today sailing around internationally do not have some piece of paper. We live in an age of credentialism. In relation to the Med, I would suggest that an ICC be acquired as a minimum. Some countries require at least two crew to have certification.

Dave


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[NornaBiron]

We checked in to Turkey two weeks ago at Gulluk, no-one asked to see any licence or evidence of qualifications whatsoever.

[chuckr]

We sailed into Montegnegro and as I checked I was asked for my license. I do not have one and was told i had to leave the country immediately. I told them I had my ASA book with me that showed the courses i took and they then accepted that. Had I not had that they would not have let me in, at least the clerk who checked me in.

They do require 1million euro liability and i got a rider for that but took a day to get it done. When I went in with it the Port Captain was there and took it and when he found we had sailed across the Atlantic he was more than generous with getting checked in quickly as he was a former big ship officer.

By the way we mentioned our lack of license to a few folks and in one country we were told that if we would give them 300euro they would have a license for us in 3 weeks. And to be honest from some of the antics we have seen from the "licensed captains" we can believe they bought them.

Next year we will check into Turkey and see how that goes.