Boat to interntational destinations? Good reason to get or renew your passport now.

The government is about to begin inserting "chips" in the passports. May be a good idea to prevent forgeries, etc, but there are some legitimate privacy concerns. It might be possible for unauthorized persons to "read" your passport information electronically, and then there's the possibility that the chips might have a use or two that we aren't being told about (to help fight terrorism, of course).

Anyway, if you don't want a microchip embedded in your passport for whatever purpose the government might want to embed one, now is the time to apply or renew. It's apparently already too late in Colorado..

http://prisonplanet.com/articles/september2006/160906idchip.htm

Now to be clear, you don't need to report to Customs if you have only been aboard your boat in Canadian waters and haven't 1)anchored, 2) gone ashore, or 3) made contact with any other vessel.

In the past, it was common to come back through Customs with nothing more than a driver's license to establish your address and your own declaration that you were a US citizen. In recent years, they tightened that up to require presentation of evidence "satisfactory to the customs examiner" that *proves* your citizenship. Border agents have been hassling Americans returning without passports, since the only document that a customs examiner has no choice except to find "satisfactory" is a valid passport. Most boaters in the Pacific NW travelling into Canadian waters now carry passports, and the law tightens up to *require* passports beginning in 2007.

I am 99.9% certain that the same law applies to people arriving by automobile, train, and cars or buses.

When returning from Canada by car you go through a US Customs checkpoint. When returning from Canada by boat you go to your marina. ;-)