One of the perks of the International Certificate for Pleasurecraft (ICP) is that you can select your own homeport. Strange as this may sound, but you can select any city or town as the home-port of your boat. Yes even the remote town of Azoleta, in the Spanish Pyrenees, can be the home port of choice, although the only waterway to be found is that of the in-house plumbing.
The only restriction you have is that the homeport lays within the borders of the European Union or EFTA, that is when it concerns the ICP. When registering in the official ships registrar, a port in the Netherlands is compulsory.
You can imagine that the most obvious and common choice boat owners make is that of their actual homeport. Less creative, but a pragmatic choice.
In some countries within the EU, authorities wonder if Marbella or Viana do Castelo as a homeport on a Dutch ICP is logical. There are known cases were boat owners are questioned for an explanation.
To avoid such enquiries Amsterdam, Rotterdam and occasionally The Hague is filled-in on the application form to register for an ICP. Safe choices which will most definitely not raise any authoritarian eyebrows.
With this article we would like to offer you some more creative alternatives for home port choices, choices which might cause a chuckle or a laugh.
- Hongerige Wolf – a village in the far north that translates to “hungry wolf”
- Gasselterboerveenschemond – if this is no struggle to pronouns, I do not know. This is the longest place name in the Netherlands
- De Dood – death
- Amerika – but then spelt with a “K”
- Boerenhol – freely translates into “farmers bum”
- Nummer Een – means nothing more than “number one”
- Portugaal – an alternative for Portugal
- Rectum – this place name might just push the limit
- Sexbierum – pronounced as “sex-beer-uhm”
- Doodstil – literally means “deadly silent”
- Raar – strange
- Lull – slang word for the male genital
- Pyramide – no translation required, I would think
