Your passport to fun, or trouble
Here is something that cruisers, or soon-to-be cruisers, would be well-advised to stay on top of: passport expiry dates and other related immigration papers.
Shortly before we were due to set sail from Canada, we visited the renewal center in Ottawa to update our passports. When we finally made our way to the counter, the agent that we spoke with thought we were a little bit silly for renewing our passports so early after she saw that each of them still had two years remaining before they were required to be updated. In her eyes we were essentially throwing away money. From our perspective though, that small amount of money didn’t matter because we knew that trying to organize a renewal when overseas would require us to jump through significantly more hoops, something we definitely wanted to avoid.
We recently heard a story about a fellow Canadian who did have to jump through the above-mentioned hoops and it didn’t sound like it was all that pleasant of an experience. Being stuck on an island, unable to travel further because you no longer have a valid passport, is not something that you want to have happen to you. Note that some countries may require you to have a passport that will be valid for at least 6 months before they let you clear in!
At this very moment we have another friend who is working his way through a very similar problem and it’s again turning out to be not so easy to fix, especially as he’s operating without a fixed address, and relying upon long-distance telephone calls and sketchy internet connections to communicate. We’ve been sending him plenty of good vibes, hoping that he gets it resolved quickly and without much more trouble.
The moral of the story is stay on top of this stuff. It’s a lot better to be playing in the sun than it is to be wrestling with the people working in passport offices and embassies!
Amen to that.
great planning on your part guys, good to think ahead.
Definitely need to plan ahead when it comes to stuff like this!
For people with kids under 16 when they obtained their passports, passports are only good for 5 years! I had to expedite my kids passports for the cruise and they treat it as a “new” application and not a renewal……Again, this is only for kids who obtained their passports under the age of 16
All Canadian passports are only good for 5 years. 🙁
actually kids 3 and under is only good for 3 years everyone else is 5 years.
Even better. 🙁
Canadians are only good for hockey……Well, maybe not!….Kidding
What’s hockey?
Canada really ought to increase the validity period for passports. The 5-year maximum renewal period (<4 years in practice) is a nuisance for travellers and doubles the workload for our consular staff, compared to the 10-year period that British, US and many other passports are good for.
That sure would be nice.
Great advice…Thanks! Mine expires in 18 months and I hadn’t thought about this until your article.
Glad I could help, Geoff.
Indeed Mike, I guess I had to visit the Island of Barbados and the U.S embassy is the excuse.
Life throws you around here and there but it’s good anyways.
Well, you did say that you wanted to go to ALL of the islands.