Thanks Bob. I think I got lucky with this boat. It was one of the very few cases where it was seriously under-advertised. Much cleaner and many more options than advertised. These boats are very hard to find. I woke up in the morning and saw the alert for a new TomCat for sale, looked at the ad and called 5 minutes later and made a full price offer.
Anyway, once you know the drill for importation, I don't think it's so bad, but not knowing anything, there is a steep learning curve.
I'm sure it's possible to do all of the paperwork yourself, but I hired two companies to do the paperwork. The biggest difficulty was trying to figure out what company did what, when and what they needed. Without a broker working for me, it was up to me to chase down docs from each party and supply them to whoever needed them. The broker I bought the boat from was very easy to work with and provided everything on time, but was also very busy helping other customers/survey's, etc.
I hired Anacortes Marine Documentation Services to transfer the title from a Canadian to an American. They also acted as escrow. They require some of the forms to be notorized. Not a problem, but the paperwork wasn't finished until a few hours before my wife jumped on a plane for Germany for a week. So that all had to be redone. This fee was around $1,000. They intentionally overcharge you ($4,000 in my case) to cover any possible exchange rate changes. I saved a bit of money here because between the offer acceptance and actually paying for the boat, the exchange rate went down enough to save me almost $2,000.
To actually "import" the boat, I hired another company McClary and Swift out of Blaine, WA to perform the necessary paperwork to bring the boat in to the states and clear Customs. This proved well worth the money ($1,176). At the U.S. Border, the customs agent was going to make me wait in a long line to inspect everything, and right as he was turning to walk away, he asked me if I hired a customs broker. I said yes, he pulled out a stamp, stamped my small mountain of paperwork and said goodbye.
I also hired a trucker but 2 days before he was scheduled to go, I found out he wasn't vaccinated so couldn't go to Canada. This caused a big wrinkle in the plan so all the paperwork had to be redone. He is actually my nephew but also a commercial trucker and was going to cut me a deal. Transporters wanted about $5k to move the boat less than 100 miles (2 hour ferry, border crossing, etc) so I elected just to go get it myself. Due to my job, I'm not allowed to spend the night in another country without 30 days notice so had to do everything in one day, which turned out to be 20 hours of travel. The trucker, whoever that may be, also needs to do an "Emanifest". They apply online and pay a fee, get an SCAC code and supply that to the customs broker. Since that was in my nephew's name, we had to do more paperwork to get that in my name or pay another fee.
Also, the previous owner performed his legal obligation to remove the license plate from the trailer. There is a permitting office in town to get a trip permit. I didn't do that and didn't get stopped. Customs didn't care but did make a comment.
In addition to all of this, I had to make the pick up time on a day when ferry reservations were available. 21' going over at $90) and 57' at $290 coming back, plus $23 for a Black Ball t-shirt to remember my trip.
Oh, and don't forget to load the ArriveCan app on your phone, load your passport and Covid vaccine card, departure time, date, location, arrival time, date, destination. You are subject to a $10,000 fine and 14 days in quarantine if you don't.
This all sounds simple enough, but I didn't know what all everyone wanted in the beginning so it was just chasing my tail the whole time. Plus, I did this all in 2 weeks from making the offer.
Basically, you need photos of everything, HIN, trailer VIN including placard on the tongue, pics of the engine serial numbers, engine EPA "family". I think with a normal 30 day closing, this would have not been an issue.
And don't forget to check tire air pressure and condition before you go. My 16,000 lb EZ Loader has oil bath bearings on it. I am following the other thread on here about those but they worked so far.
Rob
