Hi all,

My husband and I are on a sailing yacht. At the moment we are still in Malaysia but we are on our way to Thailand. Searching on the internet we find conflicting information about the visa regulations for crew on sailing yachts. Some say you can just buy a tourist visa before you enter Thailand to get three months in total, others say that people who are on the crewlist as 'crew' rather than passengers will only get a transit visa for a maximum of 30 days, which is in principle non-extendable. The only way to circumvent this would be to enter as crew, leave by plane, buy a tourist visa and enter again as ordinary tourist.

Does anyone know which information is accurate at this point in time?

Thanks in advance.

Mirjam

Whilst I am no expert in the intricacies of Thai Immigration law, I am pretty sure that the 30 day non extendable option is the one you are stuck with. Email John Farrell at seal superyachts and he will be able to confirm that for you. I discussed this issue with him recently and he mentioned that there is a move underway to give yacht crews the same rights as merchant ship crews, that is that they can stay as long as their vessel is alongside. He did complain to me that Phuket was losing a fortune due to this 30 day limit as rather than pay for the crew to fly to KL and get a visa, the large yachts are sailing to Malaysia and then returning to Phuket.

Looks like there is no other option.

Crew members seem to get 30 day, non extendable visa's.

It seems that the only thing possible is to declare as many passengers as possible, those will get 30 days, twice extendable for 15 days (or they can enter on a previously obtained visa).

Note that crew is not allowed to leave Thailand unless on the yacht they came in on. Actually they can but this requires placing a bond on leaving.

Passengers will receive a "white card" allowing them to leave Thailand without hassles.

If the captain wants to leave Thailand, he'll have to declare one of his crew as captain and enter himself as a passenger, as a boat can not be here without somebody declared in charge of it.