Against the Wind

COV ID -19 BR INGS STORMY WEATHER TO THE SECTOR

by Andrea Pezzini, CEO & Co-Founder of Floating Life

From the start of the Covid-19 emergency, I have been thinking about the problems this latest crisis could cause to the nautical sector and what would happen this summer. I drew on my 40-plus years in the sector to make some predictions about the economy, bureaucracy and the practicalities that would be facing people involved in using boats. This kept me awake a few nights, but by the end of March, I felt confident enough saying from mid-July to September, the charter market would bounce back well with all due precautions taken. That said, I was still worried about chaos in the refit yards which, because of the reduced working hours and staff numbers, would most definitely be at the pin of their collar to get all the boats in their care back on the water at the same time. My final thought was probably the most worrying and regarded bureaucracy. What would happen there? What chaos would we be facing into in attempting to move our boats around the Mediterranean? I was suddenly overwhelmed by the negative experiences of the past but I still cast off into the certain storm of bureaucracy that lay in wait. Now, at the start of July 2020, I can confirm that I was not wrong in many of my positive and negative predictions. I am reading on social media of the myriad difficulties being encountered by the owners of smaller pleasure craft who, not being large enough to engage an agency to deal with port practicalities, are often struggling single-handedly with bureaucratic procedures that vary not just between bordering states but also from region to region in certain nations. In Italy, for example, Free Hygiene Practice has also been applied to smaller pleasure craft even when they move from port to port in the same region. However, according to the Ministry for Health, this is only applicable to commercial vessels or those for which there are deemed to be justifiable health reasons, arriving in to Italy from outside the EU or nations with health crises. In my memory, it has never been applied to yachts and so no one knew how or where to do so. The resulting chaos should have impressed upon the state maritime authorities once and for all that a coordinated national and international system was required to deal both with normal bureaucratic practice and, more importantly, worldwide crises of this kind.

So let me gather up these laments and fling them into the wind of Covid-19 Bureaucracy with the hope that someone, somewhere, takes heed!

D i s t a n c i n g w i l l k e e p u s t o g e t h e r .