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View From The Chair

guidance from the EU as to their VAT status is not currently that clear. A UK
Owner with a boat located in the UK on 31 December 2020 will also find
that the rules for “going foreign” in 2021 are not as straightforward as they
were pre-Brexit. Therefore, I would ask that all owners keep a close eye on
the press, the RYA and the Cruising Association announcements to make
sure that they do not fall foul of the rules.
The Cruising Association’s President has suggested all affected parties write
to their MP (or European representative if located there) to highlight these
anomalies. The President of the CA is one of our own. Julian Dussek owns
Pluto, a S115, which is located abroad. I for one will be following his advice.
It is also worth bearing in mind that CG66 scheme was terminated in March
2020 just as the pandemic hit home. Owners have been encouraged to
register their vessels with the RYA scheme Safetrx which is available to all,
not just RYA members. This App, which has been around since July 2018 can
be used to report passages and alert authorities to overdue vessels. The
efficacy of the App has been questioned by the Cruising Association so it
may be worth just using the registration process to record your basic boat
details so that the Coastguards could access these if needed. A video posted
by the RYA is available on the web. Enter “MOVING FROM CG66 TO RYA
SAFETRX” into a search engine and you will find it.

Elsewhere, the yachting press have struggled, as we all have, with 2020.
They have had little chance to review new boats or report on any sailing
events as so many fell foul of the provisions and restrictions caused by the
pandemic. Nonetheless, Yachting Monthly managed to upset many of our
owners in their spring review of the S42 RST. Their review was broadly fair
and supportive of this excellent boat. However, a little known South Coast
surveyor was asked to comment on the boat and managed to include in his
critique just about every fault he had found in any Southerly that he had
ever looked at. He clearly had little understanding of the marque, the build
quality and the benefits of a swing keel, but his review left the reader with a
vastly false appraisal of the boat. I took up this matter with Theo Stocker,
the Editor, but he sadly refused to recant or set the record straight properly.
This was even more annoying when a review of another boat in a later

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