"666" wrote in message
...

To register in US as for non-residents they had to set-up the the Delaware
company first?
JaC
"I was chatting this summer to a Slovenian skipper ashore on a small
Croatian island
waiting for the tiny post office to open who surprised me by explaining
the mystery of
the preponderance of USA-flagged yachts in the Adriatic this year.
They were, in fact, Slovenian, and registered as he was for $100 in the
state of
Delaware, to avoid the new 40% yacht import duty in Slovenia"

My understanding was from this guy's explanation, is that they all just
applied to whomsoever registers boats in the Delaware state administration
who then supplied all the registration documentation for their boats; it
didn't seem to matter that they were not American nationals, residents of
Delaware or even the USA. Perhaps it is a scam, or a loophole that a company
can exist stateside and who sells registrations, I dunno the details. I just
know that this particular guy bought a yacht outside of his country,
Slovenia, and paid 100 US dollars to register it as a US boat, imported it
to Slovenia, keeps it there and sails it with ol' glory stuck on the stern.
At least he spoke good English, although without an American accent.

Standard flag of convenience stuff - happens in a lot of places. Plenty of
non-British owned yachts, especially big, expensive motor ones, in the
Mediterranean, flying the red ensign of British registry from Guernsey and
Jersey in the Channel Islands, just like Panama and Liberia do with
commercial shipping. It is just as easy to register a yacht in Vienna
without being Austrian or even living there, I did it myself once because of
a favourable technicality in doing so. Austria, a country with no coastline
whatsoever, if you ignore the Danube river - LOL. Well, at least my wife is
Austrian, not that that had anything to do with it.

Brian.