Checklist for Shipping your Boat

Everything you need to do before, during, and after shipping your boat

Preparing our boat for shipping was a somewhat daunting experience because we had never done it before. However, as it was described to us by our shipping agent, the preparation can be likened to if you’re riding out a hurricane or in very rough seas. Hopefully that’s also an experience no-one reading this has lived through, but we all probably have an idea of how we’d need to prepare the boat. You need to secure absolutely everything, inside and out, as well as shut the boat down as if you were leaving her for a couple of months. This was our checklist, which combines both the information given by the shipping company Sevenstar, as well as our own additions, along with any relevant notes or thoughts.

Preparing the boat prior to loading:

• Do not book flights until the boat is on the ship. The timings can vary greatly and there may be last minute changes to the loading schedule.

• Cover all fragile items, such as stainless and chrome fittings.

• Stow all loose items in the proper manner, both inside and outside.

• Take breakables off the boat or cover them in padded fabric to protect them.

• Pickle watermaker (our transit was going to be 6 weeks)

• Sails: take all sails off the boat (we left our main sail on- more on that below¹)

• Use vaseline or wax on exterior stainless steel to help protect it from damage from seawater (we didn’t do this)

• There are also coatings for painted surfaces to protect them from seawater spray (we didn’t do this)

• Close all port lights and hatches

• Empty grey and blackwater tanks. The boat should be as light as possible. ²

• Sanitise the heads and fresh water system using the usual method for when you’re leaving the boat for a prolonged period of time. A chlorine bleach solution is often recommended, but there are marine-friendly options available too which is preferable if you can’t access a pump-out station.

• Disconnect your wind vane (not relevant to us)

• Tape interior doors with blue tape so that cupboards and drawers don’t open during the crossing (we didn’t do this- we have faith in our latches!- but we did tape the shower screen doors up to be on the safe side)

• Attach feeder line to all halyards, run it up to the mast head, then put the ends of the halyard in sailbags. All exposed rope should be covered as well as possible.³

• Cover and shrink wrap furling foils and winches to prevent them getting dirty.

• Ensure dinghy is very secure and open drain plug.

• The backstay may need to be disconnected (or, if on a catamaran, the topping lift) because it may foul the crane. Before leaving the marina, test this out to ensure turnbuckles or shackles (for a topping lift) can quickly be undone and aren’t seized, and the topping lift can easily be accessed.

• Defrost the fridge and freezer, and leave drying crystals.

  

For the loading itself, when either waiting to come alongside, or actually alongside the vessel:

• Turn off all C-zone

• Depressurise fresh water system

• Cover all instruments

• Turn off air-conditioning at breakers

• Turn off DC at switches

• Turn off all batteries in such a way that you can turn on engine at discharge port

• Ensure all hatches and doors are closed securely and locked.

The Loading Procedure

The procedure for coming alongside is to have all your fenders out, a bow and stern line ready, and you would already have been advised which direction you’ll be facing (bow to bow or bow to stern). Depending on your direction, one of your lines will be your spring, so be aware of this when handling your lines, as you would when you’re coming alongside to a dock. Generally, lines will be cast down to you from the ship, but it’s always good practice to have yours ready just in case. The ship will also have it’s own fenders out, and will mark the position.

Once the boat is secure, you will have a few minutes to do your final checks and shut down anything that needs doing at the last minute. I had a list of literally *everything*, including things like, “Take shoes” (because I was running around barefoot and would absolutely forget to take my shoes with me!) and “Give one set of keys to the shipping people” and “close blinds” along with the above items such as shutting the batteries off.

I had left my large suitcase at the marina (yes, I use a suitcase on a boat! I store it under the spare bed), but I had a small day bag with me. Once I was satisfied the boat was ready, I jumped into the RIB with Chris, our agent, and we watched the process of lifting RR2 onto the ship. The first step is sending a few divers overboard to position the straps, which is why slack water is a necessity. Any current will move the straps before they can be lifted into position under the hull. Then the boat is craned up onto the deck and secured. It was quite an incredible sight to see Ruby Rose 2 being lifted onto a deck with all these other vessels.

Admin and Paperwork

There was also some paperwork/life admin to deal with as the boat is leaving one country and entering another:

• Complete all customs paperwork for country that you’re leaving (ie, Thailand in our case). We had an agent do this for us, and this was done a few days in advance of our loading.

• Complete all clearance procedures for inbound country (ie, Turkiye in our case). We also used an agent for this and in fact I don’t believe it’s possible to do this without an agent. The agent organised our customs clearance and transit log, and we had to organise our blue card ourselves. If you want more information on the clearance procedures for Turkiye and the EU/Greece, let me know, because it’s a little complicated.

• Notify your insurance company of your change of location

• Ensure you have digital charts of your new location. We totally forgot to do this and to say there was a last minute scramble is an understatement.

Let me know if there’s any questions you have, or anything else you can think of that you feel would be necessary for shipping a boat from one country to another!

We summarised our entire shipping experience in this video if you haven’t seen it yet:

We did unfortunately have some rust damage to the boat when we offloaded in Marmaris, which we talk about in the above video, and I have also written an entire substack on here.

1. We were advised by the skipper who helped us out to wrap our main sail up with rope in case the sail bag somehow came undone during shipping. However, this resulted in chafe of our sail bag and we’re not convinced it was necessary. We would advise that if you do this, consider chafe, and perhaps use sail bag ties (which we did not, because we didn’t have any spares) or similar straps, and carefully inspect for chafe points.

2. We took great care to slowly empty our water tank in the lead up to the shipping date, and then, the morning of the loading, I emptied it the rest of the way, only leaving 10%. This was a totally wasted effort as we forgot to close our rain catchment valve!! So our tanks were full of rain from the journey when we unloaded in Marmaris. Took us a few long minutes to work out why we had full tanks!

3. This is because everything will get absolutely filthy and drenched in seawater, making it very hard or impossible to manage your sails if your lines are stiff and not running smoothly. We didn’t do this as we thought it was overkill, but we did end up with very dirty lines and had to clean them all once we arrived in the Med. Basically, the more you can remove from deck or cover, the less cleaning you’ll need to do. Theoretically.