As a 49 foot British sailing vessel wanting to sail from England To Norway and spend several weeks cruising along the coast heading towards Sweden and thence to Denmark Germany the Netherlands and back to the UK we looked carefully at the immigration requirements. This is our experience.
In summary our sailing experience in Norway was extremely positive. We enjoyed a very easy and pleasurable few weeks in Norway and would definitely return. During our stay we did not encounter a single other yacht of any description that was British or from any other country outside the Schengen area.
The Norwegian government website indicates that yachts arriving from outside of Schengen should register, in the first instance with SSNN (safe Sea Net Norway) although my research indicated this might be tricky and also indicated that reporting and obtaining permission to move and drop anchor was really important.
After failing to complete the registration process for SSNN, which seemed to be set up for large commercial vessels only, my next move was to contact the police authority of the district where we intended to make landfall – Stavanger csc@ccss.mil.no.
We were then required to submit a copy of our boat registration certificate, confirming our length to be 14.95 metres. If we had been just five centimetres longer -15 metres- I was informed that we would have to register with the military. A swift e-mail reply from the authorities confirmed that unless we had “special capacities” our vessel was not required to report in to the Coastal Surveillance. We were told that if we had been required to report in we could do so without the SSNN registration by using the e-mail given above, but we would still have to report in an ETA and destination and obtained permission in order to move the boat.
The last instruction was to call or e-mail the police on arrival in Stavanger and the sender wished us a pleasant voyage.
It was an interesting and largely enjoyable sail from Hartlepool in England (before departure we informed the UK authorities of using a sPCR form from the UK government web site); past wind farms, drilling rigs and oil and gas platforms, and with a fair number of cargo, fishing and pleasure vessels.
As we approached Stavanger I telephoned the police on the given number to report our imminent arrival I was told they would call back in due course we tide up in Stavanger guest haven a small self-service Marina situated conveniently in the heart of the Old Town and immediately adjacent to the petrol museum for the record this cost 250 Norwegian kroner per night for our 14.95 metre vessel which included free access to the shower and washrooms and also the laundry.
Our next contact from the police was to arrange a time for them to visit us and stamp our passports. We were offered a morning visit the following day and were advised it was fine for us to leave the boat in order to explore, eat, visit the museum and buy provisions which we did keeping our yellow Q flag flying.
Two very pleasant lady police officers came to a vote the following day they sport asked us if we understood the rules of Schengen in terms of the time limit and advising us that whatever country we took parted back to the UK from we should ensure that we had our passports stamped. Interestingly, the fact that they had taken 24 hours to visit us gave us an effective free Shengen day.
They reassured us that we did not have to report in and with that they wished us a good day and left it appeared that they had not often if ever had to perform this particular duty.
And that was it. A few days later at the small port of Tananger, we were approached by some police. We offered them sight of our stamped passports and boat papers and they left us with a cheery wave moments later.
We spent three happy weeks cruising the Norwegian coast finding it beautiful easy and friendly wherever we went. We have just left Norway en route to Sweden.