Aussie Customs versus Sailing Vessel SohCahToa

UPDATE!  Comments received from the man himself! 

From the SohCahToa Website:

Minor Celebrities
jeff September 8 

Yesterday Matt and I went to court for our customs violations. I’ll post a big update later, but i just saw that our “issue” is on a sailing blog and people are making comments about us. I guess we have finally made it. Check out the link to Live Sail Die. I also just noticed that we are on the news.com.au website under “Breaking News”. Here is a link. One funny thing about the court proceedings. The prosecuting solicitor(attorney) actually used our website as evidence against us. Teaches us for keeping this fucking thing up. 

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Original Post:

Things just didn’t “add up“ for the crew of SohCahToa when they made their arrival into Cairns from Vanuatu in mid August.

The adventurous guys travelling the world realised that no matter where they are, the rules of the country must be followed…

News.com.au said:

A YACHTSMAN has been fined more than $3,000 for failing to declare his arrival in Australia.

Australian Customs said today Jeffrey Stewart, the master of the sailing vessel Sohcahtoa, had arrived in Cairns on a voyage from Vanuatu on August 15.

But he failed to advise Customs of his arrival or that of his vessel or crew.

Today, he pleaded guilty in the Cairns magistrates court to charges against the Customs Act and was fined $3,430, including costs.

Customs Acting District manager at Cairns Matt Townsend said the penalty was a reminder to the Australian and international yachting community about the importance of reporting their movements in and out of the country.

“The obligations for yacht owners and masters to report their movements are no different to those for larger vessel and aircraft,” Mr Townsend said.

“This information is vital for Customs to do its job of helping to protect Australia’s borders from illegal activity.”

Ships masters are required to provide notice of intended arrival to customs 96 hours before their arrival in Australia and must arrive at a proclaimed port.

SohCahToa said:

The Harbor Control advised us to stand off until morning when we could get the Coast Guard to tow us in, so we floated around until 7am or so and then began the cluster fuck. There was still the 20 knots of wind with a pretty good wind wave and we wrangled and jostled around with the big yellow coast guard cutter until they could heave a line over to us and we got it attached to our burly anchor cleat. The channel to Cairns goes straight up a river delta, so is about 200 feet wide and 15 feet deep with mud on both sides. And the wind comes right down the middle, so we would have had to tack about a hundred times to get up there, if we could make any progress in the current. EVEN with those considerations it is still a bit of a blow to the pride of a sailor to be towed in by the Coast Guard when it is windy. “Hey. . why don’t you use those big flappy sail thingys?” We were towed to an anchorage where the friendly customs Nazis showed up with 5 people and a drug sniffing dog. We had unknowingly violated Australian customs law by not notifying customs of our arrival 96 hours in advance. So in turn we won the full “crawl up your butt with a magnifying glass” customs treatment. This included a taped interview with two customs agents regarding why i was such a negligent ship’s master. Our World Cruising Guide (fuck you very much Jimmy Cornell) said that we needed to give customs 3 hours notice (which we did). So after having all of our cupboards emptied and the dog run through all of our stuff, we had to explain that YES we could afford the boat and NO I don’t have any business card to PROVE that I used to work at this obviously fictitious company “Cypress MicroSystems”. We are currently under Customs Control and can’t leave the Harbor. . .which is easy since we can’t leave the anchorage due to the fact that we still have no engine. That and we have no battery power left, so in the evening, we have romantic candlelight to see by. All in all, we could be fined about $8000 Australian dollars if they chose to prosecute us AND all of our new Fijian injectors for our diesel are right now being rebuilt for the second time in a month.

Regardless of these guys perhaps doing the wrong thing with not correctly reporting to Customs, they have an awesome website detailing their cruising adventures around the world. And they were not shy in openly discussing what happened when they finally arrived in Australia!

No matter where you are you can actually buy these guys a round of drinks! “We won’t drink any urine. Even if it is cheap and a popular drink wherever we are”

Should we be mad at them for not obeying our laws or buy them a beer?