Do you need a boat license to sail in the Carribean (Guadeloupe, Martinique)?

No license is required to skipper a sailing yacht or catamaran in the French Carribean, regardless of the vessel's size. Guadeloupe and Martinique are French departments, and French law requires no certificate of competence under sail. A license is required for any motorboat over 6 hp. In every case, a boat rental without a skipper means submitting a sailing resume for the charter company to approve.

When a license is required and when it is not

A yacht's auxiliary engine does not trigger the license requirement, because sail remains the vessel's main means of propulsion. A 45-foot catamaran fitted with a 40 hp engine can therefore be skippered without any license, as long as sail remains the primary means of propulsion underway. The minimum age to sit the French exam is 16.

Almost the entire fleet available for catamaran charter in the Carribean is open to sailors without a certificate. That fleet is overwhelmingly made up of sailing multihulls, and the same applies to sailing yacht charter in the Carribean, monohulls included.

What the charter company actually asks for

No license does not mean no conditions. For any bareboat charter, operators ask for a sailing resume, which takes the place of a license when they assess your level.

What a sailing resume should contain

• Miles covered as skipper rather than as crew
• Areas sailed, specifying any open-water passages
• Types and sizes of boats already skippered, monohull or multihull
• Number of nights on board and length of the cruises completed
• Date of your most recent significant passage
• Any qualifications and certificates held

If your sailing resume doesn't meet the operator's standards, you may be turned down, required to hire a skipper, or asked to complete a check-out sail with the base manager at an additional cost.

Qualifications recognized in the Carribean

None of these qualifications replaces the sailing resume: they support it.

Chartering with a skipper: no conditions at all

• No license required
• No sailing resume requested
• No previous experience needed
• The skipper is responsible for handling the boat and for safety on board

This suits first-time sailors, families planning a Caribbean sailing vacation, and crews whose experience does not cover the tropics. The same applies to scheduled departures: a catamaran cruise in Martinique leaving from Le Marin sails with a professional skipper, and the skipper manages navigation and port clearances at every stop.

Sailing beyond French waters

From Le Marin or Pointe-à-Pitre, most itineraries leave French waters. That is the case on an Carribean cruise departing from Guadeloupe, running down to Les Saintes and on to Dominica. None of the neighboring states requires a license for a sailing yacht, but the formalities change.

The real limit is contractual rather than legal: the charter contract sets a permitted sailing area, outside which the boat's insurance no longer applies. Before booking a yacht charter in the Caribbean, it is worth reading up on sailing conditions in Guadeloupe, in particular the trade wind pattern and which anchorages are open.

Do you need a radio license for the VHF?

Using a VHF set on a French-registered vessel falls under the Certificat restreint de radiotéléphoniste (CRR), the French restricted radio operator's certificate. On a charter the radio station belongs to the operator and charterers are not required to hold the CRR, though it remains advisable for anyone in command on an island-hopping passage.

Documents to prepare: the summary