CBP, the agency to protect the US borders has an app called ROAM. According to their homepage you need to use it when you want to enter US waters by a vessel with non commercial, thus “pleasure” activities. Already in Sint Maarten I wanted to get permission to enter St Thomas, but could not submit my application with the message that I’m still to far away. I sent a message and a helpful officer informed me that the app is geo-fenced this can be used only in US borders. At the end, I sailed into St Thomas, and made inbound clearance just by going to the office and filled in one paper form.<\/p>\n
When I checked the CBP homepage for the PoE (port of entry) Fajardo, Puerto Rico, it states that a permission is needed in advance to enter this PoE but no further information. I called CBP. The answer I got was to use the ROAM app. This app requires always a security code which is sent by SMS. Originally I used the phone number of my Caribbean SIM card. This card I cannot use in the USVI. As I have now a USVI SIM card I wanted to replace the phone numbers and got the message that I need to delete my account and create a new one. Fine, I thought, I have to re-enter all information again.<\/p>\n
This is no surprise because in times of internet. All administrations around the world shift the work to the people who need to apply for something. This must have let to lay off of millions of people in administrative offices. However, I never read such news. Why???<\/p>\n
When I started deleting my account, I got an email saying that I have to wait for 24 h before I received an email with a link that deletes the account. “Change what to don’t accept and accept what you don’t change.” I waited.<\/p>\n
24 h later I had the email. As I had 24 h to deeply think and re-think and think and re-think my decision to delete my account, I simply clicked “delete”. When I wanted to enter my USVI SIM card phone number, the system told me that this number cannot be used. My satellite phone number cannot be used a well. I used S’s Japanese phone number. After I filled in my personal data and the system recovered my boat data. So much about deleting an account.<\/p>\n
After I got all in, I pushed the “Submit” button to get within minutes the answer that I’m not allowed to enter US waters, while I’m sitting on a boat fully cleared in into St Thomas, US Virgin Islands, thus US waters. “Don’t try logically to understand that” I told myself. I simply re-sent my application. That time a friendly officer told me by email , that he can see – how? – that I’m still in the USVI, and I have to submit my request to enter Fajardo when I’m in Fajardo.
\nSo I will get permission to enter Fajardo after I arrived in Fajardo. “Don’t understand logically to understand that” I told myself again.<\/p>\n
Sailing around the world means spending days in beautiful bays to fill in web based forms and apps to get permission to enter a country. Internet is really a great invention for all kind of administrative work!!!<\/p>\n
After all this was done, we sailed around the corner and dropped the hook for a night in the Perseverance Bay, a quite bay where we are the only boat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CBP, the agency to protect the US borders has an app called ROAM. According to their homepage you need to use it when you want to enter US waters by a vessel with non commercial, thus “pleasure” activities. Already in Sint Maarten I wanted to get permission to enter St Thomas, but could not submit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-13"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}