registration

Choosing a flag for your yacht is a question that certainly arises before all yacht owners.

You have built or bought a yacht and are ready to sail the seas. However, in order to travel smoothly, you need to register and insure your yacht. Registration of a sailing or motor yacht gives the right to fly the flag of the state in which the yacht will be registered, as well as the ownership of it. It is also necessary that, according to the UNCLOS convention: "The space occupied by a yacht on the high seas is considered the territory of the state where the yacht is registered."

We can register your yacht under our flag as well as under a foreign one (Jersey, Panama, Virgin Islands, Gibraltar, etc.).

What is the main difference between a strictly national and an international registry? The main difference is as follows:

• the owner of a yacht registered in the national register can only be an individual - a citizen or a legal entity registered in the flag state, and
• the owner of a yacht registered in the international register can be either any individual / legal entity, regardless of nationality, or a person from a limited list of regions.

In the Republic of Panama, the owner of a yacht registered under the Panamanian flag can be any individual / legal entity, regardless of nationality.

The owner of a yacht registered in Jersey can be any individual / legal entity registered in the British Commonwealth (eg England, Belize, British Virgin Islands, etc.) or the EU.

The procedure for registering a yacht in the register of a particular state depends on a number of factors, first of all, it is, of course, the type of register and the requirements put forward to the owner and the yacht itself, including:

• Flag register restrictions on yacht tonnage. For example, Cyprus, Malta and Panama have no yacht tonnage restrictions. And in Jersey, a pleasure / commercial yacht can be registered with a total gross tonnage of not more than 400 GVT.
• The planned way of operating the yacht: commercial, or for personal purposes. Commercial yachts are subject to different requirements from pleasure yachts, primarily related to compliance with international maritime conventions and compliance of the yacht with established technical norms / standards.
• Yacht technical survey. According to the rules of certain registries, a yacht must undergo a technical safety survey, with special requirements imposed on yachts that will be operated for commercial purposes, for example, to be chartered. This survey is provided by the relevant classification society, which is recognized by the register and assigns a class to the yacht.