[WHOOSH]

Ron, I notice a flurry of expressed concern about an ICC being required for foreign yachtsman but little evidence it is actually needed by non-EU yachts. By bi-lateral & multi-party treaty, EU countries are required to accept a vessel''s compliance with its own registration requirements, not the country being visited. It supposedly gets stickier when one enters the canals, where ICC papers are ''required'' but I see little evidence this is true in practice. (E.g. we did the Kiel Canal twice and the entire length of The Netherlands in canals this past season; never heard/saw the issue being raised by anyone, to anyone). For more info on this, folks can visit www.noonsite.com/Members/doina/R2002-11-29-2/viewhttp://www.noonsite.com/Members/doina/R2002-11-29-2/view where both a typical, sweeping lament is stated and also some real-world advice.

Having said all this, I carry several USCGA certificates which - based on others'' experiences - will work fine with port officials because they will likely be seen as evidence of proficiency in the U.S. Power Squadron certificates are another example.

You mention Portugal''s "Circ''n Tax" - can you say a bit more? It sounds at first blush like Spain''s ''Wealth Tax'' which can be imposed after 180 days, but which I have only found one example of actually being levied so far.

I disagree about saying the UK hasn''t caught the EU bureaucratic virus; it''s just in a different form. In many ways, the Brits are far more thorough at creating paper pathways to implement EU rules. They just fail at implementation (along with many other EU countries, I might add). I can offer some pretty laughable examples of the Brit officials admitting their rules are so overlapping and complex that the administering officials can''t even decipher them. At least they offer a bit of typically-British humor and pleasant reasonableness along with their organizational incompetence. By contrast, the French seem less diligent about uniform rules and more inclined to act based on provincial understandings (which often times can be self-serving, financially).

WRT liability insurance, what''s your source for the statement that Portugal (the country) requires it? I''d like to follow up on that. Insofar as I''m aware, where this is imposed in Europe, it''s typically by marinas and private operators, not by national govts.

Jack