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038 - Avoiding Customs


The waterway from Lake Erie to Lake Huron is a bit confusing.  The Detroit River is more like a fast-moving delta region with “the river” breaking up into 3 channels at one point with multiple islands.  The USA/Canadian border winds its way around these waters and it is very difficult to keep track of what country you are in at any one time.  Lake St. Clair is straight forward enough, but the St. Clair River which is the outflow from Huron to St. Clair is similar the Detroit River, more a flooded delta region that makes it difficult again to know what country you are in.

The basic rule is you can transit each other’s waters as long as you don’t anchor, transfer people or cargo to another boat, or touch each other’s shore or facilities.  If any of the three occur you must report to customs within 24 hrs.  The Canadian’s make this relatively easy with a phone call, the American’s not so much, they require a face-to-face in one of their “conveniently” located offices.  I’m not sure who its convenient for but we didn’t find any near where we touched.  Prior to 9-11 these rules were not enforced and you simply did what you needed to do to transient these waters.  Particularly when it came to anchoring.  No one cared whose territory it was as long as you didn’t get off.  Not now, they have patrols looking for infractions.  Sadly, the best and only anchorages on the Detroit River were in Canada.  The one in the picture was the only US anchorage and as you can see it was small.  The picture doesn’t capture the other two boats behind the big boy or the other that came in later.  It was super crowded, one of the worse we experienced on the Great Lakes.  All law has unintended consequences, this is just a minor one but living evidence how it impacts lives.

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